# 1738 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1738.

## Events

* April 11 – Robert Blair marries Isabella Law.
* July 10 – Richard Dawes is appointed Master of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.
* August – Laurence Sterne is ordained a priest, and in the autumn becomes vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire.
* August 8 – Jonathan Swift writes to Alexander Pope describing the deterioration in his mental condition; Swift will eventually be given into the care of a legal guardian.
* September 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer (published 1785).

## New books
### Prose

* James Anderson – The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, 2nd ed.
* Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens – Jewish Letters (published anonymously)
* John Banks – Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose
* 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
* Robert Dodsley – The Art of Preaching
* Marie Huber – Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l'homme (Letters Concerning the Religion Essential to Man)
* David Hume (anonymously) – A Treatise of Human Nature (dated 1739)
* Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Sur la figure de la terre
* Margareta Momma – Samtal emellan Argi Skugga och en obekant Fruentimbers Skugga (Conversation between the Shadow of Argus and the Unfamiliar Shadow of a Female)
* Francis Moore – Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa
* Abbé Prévost – Memoirs of a Man of Quality (anonymous English translation)
* Thomas Shaw – Travels in Barbary and the Levant
* Jonathan Swift
** The Beasts Confession to the Priest
** A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
* William Warburton
** The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated
** A Vindication of the author of the Divine Legation of Moses
* George Whitefield – A Journal of a Voyage from London to Savannah in Georgia
* Diego de Torres Villarroel
** Anatomía de todo lo visible e invisible
** Vida ejemplar de la venerable madre Gregoria Francisca de Santa Teresa

### Drama

* Robert Dodsley – Sir John Cockle at Court
* Carlo Goldoni
** Momolo Cortesan
** L'uomo di mondo
* 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)
* Charles Marsh – Amasis, King of Egypt
* James Miller –
** Art and Nature
** The Coffee House
* Alexis Piron – La Metromanie
* António José da Silva – Precipicio de Faetonte
* James Thomson – Agamemnon

### Poetry

* Mark Akenside (anonymously) – A British Philippic
* Elizabeth Carter (anonymously) – Poems Upon Particular Occasions
* John Gay – Fables: Volume the Second
* Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas líricas
* Samuel Johnson – London, A Poem, on the Third Satire of Juvenal
* 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
* James Thomson – The Works of Mr Thomson
* Diego de Torres Villarroel – Juguetes de Talia, entretenimiento del numen
* John Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (first English edition)

## Births

* February 9 (baptized) – Mary Whateley, English poet and playwright (died 1825)
* May 9 – John Wolcot, English satirist and poet (died 1819)
* May 12 – Jonathan Boucher, English philologist (died 1804)
* May 27 – Moritz August von Thümmel, German humorist and satirical author (died 1817)
* June 21 – Gottlieb Christoph Harless, German bibliographer (died 1815)
* July 24 – Betje Wolff, Dutch novelist (died 1804)
* November 15 – Joseph Johnson, English publisher (died 1809)
* December 4 – Karl Friedrich Kretschmann, German poet, playwright and storyteller (died 1809)
* unknown date – Manuel Lassala, Spanish dramatist and philosopher (died 1806)

## Deaths

* January 6 – Jean-Baptiste Labat, French polymath (born 1663)
* March – Margrethe Lasson, Danish novelist (born 1659)
* April 25 – Giacomo Laderchi, Italian ecclesiastical historian (born c. 1678)
* June 5 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant theologian (born 1659)
* July 8 – Jean-Pierre Nicéron, French lexicographer (born 1685)
* September 3 or 4 – George Lillo, English playwright (born 1691)
* September 23 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist writer (born 1668)
* November 10 – John Asgill, English pamphleteer (born 1659)