1738 in literature

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The year 1738 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• Robert Blair marries Isabella Law.
• Beginning of the mental decline of Jonathan Swift.
• Laurence Sterne is ordained.
• Richard Dawes becomes master of the grammar school at Newcastle upon Tyne.
• "Jenkins' Ear" a cause in Parliament.

New books

• Anonymous - Memoirs of a Man of Quality (transl.)
• Mark Akenside - A British Philippic
• John Banks - Miscellaneous Works
• Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten - De ordine in audiendis philosophicis per triennium academicum quaedam praefatus acroases proximae aestati destinatas indicit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
• Louis de Beaufort - Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq prèmiers siècles de l'histoire romaine
• Elizabeth Carter - Poems
• Alexander Cruden - A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament
• Robert Dodsley - The Art of Preaching
  • - Sir John Cockle at Court
• John Gay - Fables: Volume the Second
• Samuel Johnson - London
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis - Sur la figure de la terre
• Alexander Pope - The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
  • - The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
  • with Jonathan Swift - An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace
  • - One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight
  • - The Universal Prayer
  • - One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: Dialogue II
• Frances Seymour - The Story of Inkle and Yarrico
• Jonathan Swift - The Beasts Confession to the Priest
  • - A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
• James Thomson - Works
• William Warburton - The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated
  • - A Vindication of the author of the Divine Legation of Moses
• John Wesley - A Collection of Psalms and Hymns
• George Whitefield - A Journal of a Voyage from London to Savannah in Georgia

New drama

• Robert Dodsley - Sir John Cockle at Court
• Sir Hildebrand Jacob - The Happy Constancy
  • - The Prodigal Reformed
  • - The Trial of Conjugal Love
• George Lillo - Marina (adapted from Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
• James Miller - Art and Nature
• António José da Silva - Precipicio de Faetonte
• James Thomson - Agamemnon

Births

• May 12 - Jonathan Boucher, philologist (died 1804)
• June 21 - Gottlieb Christoph Harless, bibliographer (died 1815)
• July 24 - Betje Wolff, novelist (died 1804)
• date unknown
  • Richard Chandler, antiquary
  • Manuel Lassala, dramatist and philosopher

Deaths

• April 25 - James Laderchi, ecclesiastical historian
• June 5 - Isaac de Beausobre, theologian
• July 8 - Jean-Pierre Nicéron, lexicographer
• September 23 - Herman Boerhaave, humanist writer
• date unknown
  • John Asgill, pamphleteer
  • Jean-Baptiste Labat, polymath
  • Laurence Eusden, poet and poet laureate
  • Hildebrand Jacob
  • George Lillo, playwright
  • Margrethe Lasson, writer