1734 in literature

The year 1734 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Manoel da Assumpcam begins writing his grammar of the Bengali language.
• Copies of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais are burned, and a warrant is issued for the author's arrest.
• Le Cabinet du Philosophe, a new periodical by Pierre de Marivaux, is unsuccessfully launched.

New books

• Jonathan Swift - A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed
• Robert Tatersal - The Bricklayer's Miscellany

New drama

• Henry Carey, as "Benjamin Bounce"
  • Chrononhotonthologos
  • The Dragon of Wantley (burlesque)
• Henry Fielding
  • Don Quixote in England
  • The Intriguing Chambermaid
• Carlo Goldoni - Belisario
• James Miller - The Mother-in-Law (adapted from Molière's Le Malade imaginaire and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac)
• James Ralph - The Cornish Squire
• António José da Silva - Esopaida
• James Thomson - The Tragedy of Sophonisba

Poetry

• Mary Barber - Poems
• Stephen Duck - Truth and Falsehood
• William Dunkin
  • The Lover's Web
  • The Poet's Prayer
• See also 1734 in poetry

Non-fiction

• Anonymous - A Rap at the Rhapsody (on Swift's 1733 On Poetry)
• Jean Adam - Miscellany Poems
• Joseph Addison - A Discourse on Antient and Modern Learning (posth.)
• John Arbuthnot - Gnothi Seauton: Know Yourself
• Francis Atterbury - Sermons
• George Berkeley - The Analyst
• Henry Brooke - Design and Beauty: an Epistle
• Isaac Hawkins Browne - On Design and Beauty
• Dimitrie Cantemir - History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire (1734 is the date of the first publishing, as the book had been circulating in manuscript)
• Robert Dodsley - An Epistle to Mr. Pope
• John Jortin - Remarks on Spenser's Poems
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu - The Dean's Provocation for Writing the Lady's Dressing-Room (on Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room")
• Alexander Pope
  • Essay on Man
  • An Epistle to Lord Cobham ("Moral Epistle I")
  • The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace
  • Sober Advice from Horace
• Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz - Mémoires
• Jonathan Richardson - Explanatory Notes on Milton's Paradise Lost
• George Sale - The Koran
• Emanuel Swedenborg - Opera philosophica et mineralia
• Joseph Trapp - Thoughts Upon the Four Last Things ("Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell")
• Voltaire - Lettres anglaises

Births

• January 10 - Fleury Mesplet, printer (died 1794
• July 25 - Ueda Akinari, Japanese poet and novelist (died 1809)
• October 23 - Nicolas-Edme Rétif, novelist (died 1806)
• December 31 - Claude Joseph Dorat, "Le Chevalier Dorat" (died 1780)
• date unknown
  • Catharina Ahlgren, Swedish writer (died 1800)
  • Robert Aitken, printer and publisher (died 1802)

Deaths

• January 6 - John Dennis, dramatist and critic (born 1658)
• February 24 - Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier, writer of fairy tales (born 1664)
• March 1 - Roger North (17th century), biographer (born 1653)
• April 25 - Johann Conrad Dippel, theologian (born 1673)
• September 17 - Thomas Fuller, collector of proverbs (born 1654)
• October - Thomas Lloyd, lexicographer (born c.1673)
• date unknown
  • Richard Cantillon, economic theorist (born 1680)
  • James Moore Smythe, dramatist (born 1702)