# 1730 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1730.

## Events

* January 7 – The death of the Icelandic scholar Árni Magnússon activates the bequest to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark of the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, which he has assembled.
* January 8 – The Grub Street Journal is launched in London, with Richard Russel and John Martyn as editors. It lasts for 418 issues.
* April 17 – Pietro Metastasio arrives in Vienna, where he settles permanently.
* September/October – Colley Cibber becomes Poet Laureate of the Kingdom of Great Britain, in succession to Laurence Eusden.
* December 11 – Voltaire's Brutus is finally staged.
* unknown date – Romeo and Juliet becomes the first of Shakespeare's plays to be performed in America, when it is staged in New York City.

## New books
### Prose

* Joseph Addison – The Evidences of the Christian Religion (posthumous)
* John Bancks – The Weaver's Miscellany
* Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix – Histoire de l'Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue
* Thomas Cooke as "Scriblerus Tertius" – The Candidates for the Bays
* Yaakov Culi – Me'am Lo'ez
* Philip Doddridge – Free Thoughts on the Most Probable Means of Reviving the Dissenting Interest
* Johann Christoph Gottsched – Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen
* John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey – Observations on the Writings of the Craftsman
* George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton – An Epistle to Mr. Pope
* Pierre des Maizeaux – Vie de Bayle
* Isaac Rand – Index plantarum officinalium, quas ad materiae medicae scientiam promovendam, in horto Chelseiano (catalogue of plants in Chelsea Physic Garden)
* Philip Johan von Strahlenberg – Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia (North and Eastern Parts of Europe and Asia)
* Jonathan Swift – A Libel on D—— D——, and a Certain Great Lord
* Matthew Tindal – Christianity as Old as Creation
* William Whiston – Life of Samuel Clarke
* William Wotton (posthumous) – A Discourse Concerning the Confusion of Languages at Babel
* Edward Young – Two Epistles to Mr. Pope

### Drama

* Theophilus Cibber – Patie and Peggy (opera)
* Henry Fielding
** The Author's Farce
** Rape upon Rape
** The Temple Beau
** Tom Thumb
* Charles Johnson – The Tragedy of Medea
* George Lillo – Sylvia
* Pierre de Marivaux – The Game of Love and Chance
* Benjamin Martyn – Timoleon
* James Miller – The Humours of Oxford
* John Mottley – The Widow Bewitched
* Gabriel Odingsells – Bayes's Opera
* James Ralph – The Fashionable Lady
* James Thomson – Sophonisba
* Edward Ward – The Prisoner's Opera

### Poetry

* Stephen Duck – Poems on Several Subjects (including "The Thresher's Labour")
* Matthew Pilkington – Poems on Several Occasions
* Elizabeth Thomas – The Metamorphosis of the Town
* James Thomson – The Seasons
* See also 1730 in poetry

## Births

* March 27 – Thomas Tyrwhitt, English critic (died 1786)
* April 1 – Salomon Gessner, Swiss painter and poet (died 1788)
* August 20 – Paul Henri Mallet, Swiss historian (died 1807)
* November 10 – Oliver Goldsmith, Anglo-Irish poet and dramatist (died 1774)
* December 6 – Sophie von La Roche (Maria Sophie Gutermann von Gutershofen), German novelist (died 1807)
* unknown dates
** Thomas Marryat, English medical writer and physician (died 1792)
** Joakim Stulić, Croatian lexicographer (died 1817)
** Tarikonda Venkamamba, Telugu poet (died 1817)
* probable year – Charlotte Lennox, Gibraltar-born Scottish novelist and poet (died 1804)

## Deaths

* January 7 – Árni Magnússon, Icelandic scholar (born 1663)
* February 9 – Johann Georg von Eckhart, German historian (born 1664)
* March 20 – Adrienne Lecouvreur, French actress (born 1692)
* July 16 – Elijah Fenton, English poet (born 1683)
* August 16 – Laurence Echard, English historian (born c. 1670)
* September 14 – Sophia Elisabet Brenner, Swedish poet and writer (born 1659)
* September 27 – Laurence Eusden, English Poet Laureate (born 1688)
* October 23 – Anne Oldfield, English actress (born 1683)
* November – Nedîm, Ottoman poet (born c. 1680; killed in the Patrona Halil uprising
* December 31 – Carlo Gimach, Maltese architect, engineer and poet (born 1651)