1699 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1699.

Events

 * January 27 – Jonathan Swift is out of work after his employer, Sir William Temple, dies, leaving Swift £100.
 * May 4 – The beginning of the fictional Gulliver's Travels (1726).
 * June 1 – Joseph Addison receives a grant or pension from the Crown, enabling him to travel abroad.

Prose

 * Richard Bentley – A Dissertation upon the Epistles of Phalaris (prev. pub. in William Wotton's Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning)
 * Samuel Clarke
 * Some Reflections on that part of a book called Amyntor, or a Defence of Milton's Life, which relates to the Writings of the Primitive Fathers, and the Canon of the New Testament
 * Three Practical Essays on Baptism, Confirmation and Repentance
 * Jeremy Collier – A Defence of the Short View of the Profaneness and Immorality of the English Stage (see 1698 in literature)
 * Anne Dacier (Anne Lefèvre) – Homer's Iliad (prose, first translation into French)
 * William Dampier – Voyages and Descriptions (vol. ii)
 * John Dunton – The Dublin Scuffle
 * George Farquhar – The Adventures of Covent-Garden
 * François Fénelon (anonymously) – Les Aventures de Télémaque ("The Adventures of Telemachus")
 * Samuel Garth – The Dispensary (satire by one of Pope's mentors)
 * John Hughes – The Court of Neptune
 * George Keith – The Deism of William Penn, and his Brethren
 * William King
 * Dialogues of the Dead (in support of Charles Boyle)
 * The Furmetary
 * A Journey to London
 * Gerard Langbaine – The Lives and Characters of the English Dramatick Poets (cont. by Charles Gildon)
 * Roger L'Estrange – Fables and Storyes Moralized
 * John Locke – Mr Locke's Reply to the Right Revered the Lord Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Second Letter (see 1697 in literature)
 * Cornelius Nary – The Chief Points in Controversy between the Catholics and the Protestants
 * Frances Norton – Reliquae Gethinianae
 * John Oldmixon – Reflections on the Stage, and Mr Collier's Defence of the Short View
 * Nicolas Steno (Niels Stenson) – De solido intra solidum naturaliter contento dissertationis prodromus (Preliminary Discourse to a Dissertation on a Solid Body Naturally Contained within a Solid)
 * William Temple – Letters Written by Sir William Temple During his Being Ambassador at The Hague (edited initially by Jonathan Swift)
 * John Toland
 * The Life of John Milton
 * Amyntor; or, A Defence of Milton's Life
 * Thomas Traherne – A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God
 * William Wake – The Principles of the Christian Religion Explained
 * Ned Ward – A Trip to New-England
 * James Wright – Historia Histrionica

Poetry

 * Thomas Brown – A Collection of Miscellany Poems, Letters, etc.
 * Thomas D'Urfey – A Choice Collection of New Songs and Ballads
 * John Pomfret – The Choice
 * Nahum Tate – Elegies

Drama

 * Abel Boyer – Achilles, or Iphegenia in Aulis
 * Colley Cibber – Xerxes
 * John Dennis – Rinaldo and Armida
 * George Farquhar – The Constant Couple
 * Charles Gildon – Measure for Measure, or Beauty the Best Advocate (a re-adaptation of Davenant's 1662 adaptation The Law Against Lovers)
 * Joseph Harris – Love's a Lottery, and a Woman the Prize
 * Charles Hopkins – Friendship Improved
 * Peter Anthony Motteux – The Island Princess; or, The Generous Portuguese (opera, adapted from John Fletcher)
 * Mary Pix – The False Friend

Births

 * April 17 – Robert Blair, Scottish poet (died 1746)
 * April 28 – Joseph Spence, English literary historian (died 1768)
 * June 26 – Madame Geoffrin, French salonnière (died 1777)
 * August 13 (bapt.) – John Dyer, Welsh poet (died 1757)
 * December 29 – Friedrich Ludwig Abresch, German-born Dutch philologist (died 1782)

Deaths

 * January 21 – Obadiah Walker, English religious writer and controversialist (born 1616)
 * January 27 – Sir William Temple, English statesman and essayist (born 1628)
 * March 24 – John Evelyn the Younger, English translator (born 1655)
 * March 27 – Edward Stillingfleet, English theologian (born 1635)
 * April 21 – Jean Racine, French dramatist (born 1639)
 * April 22
 * Hans Erasmus Aßmann, Freiherr von Abschatz, German statesman and poet (born 1646)
 * Lady Anne Halkett, English memoirist (born 1623)
 * November 23 – Joseph Beaumont, English clergyman, academic and poet (born 1616)
 * December 16 – Erhard Weigel, German philosopher and mathematician (born 1625)