1718 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1718.

Events

 * November 1 – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes the last of her Turkish Letters, addressed to Alexander Pope.
 * November 18 – Voltaire's first play, Oedipus, premières at the Comédie-Française in Paris. This is his first use of the pseudonym. He has been released from the Bastille this year, while Marguerite De Launay, Baronne Staal, begins a two-year sentence.
 * The Freethinker (newspaper) is founded by Ambrose Philips and Hugh Boulter.
 * Laurence Eusden becomes Poet Laureate of England.
 * Ludvig Holberg becomes a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Prose

 * Nicholas Amhurst – Protestant Popery; or, The Convocation (part of the Bangorian Controversy)
 * Daniel Defoe (attr.) – A Vindication of the Press
 * Charles Gildon – The Complete Art of Poetry
 * Mary Hearne – The Lover's Week
 * Simon Ockley – The History of the Saracens, volume 2
 * Ambrose Philips – The Free-Thinker (periodical)
 * Allan Ramsay -Christ's Kirk on the Green (revised version)
 * John Ray – Philosophical Letters
 * John Strype – The Life and Acts of John Witgift
 * John Toland – Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity
 * John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester – Remains of the Earl of Rochester

Drama

 * Charles Beckingham – Scipio Africanus
 * John Durant Breval – The Play is the Plot
 * Christopher Bullock – The Traitor
 * Susanna Centlivre – A Bold Stroke for a Wife
 * Charles Molloy – The Coquet
 * Richard Savage – Love in a Veil
 * Elkanah Settle and Lewis Theobald – The Lady's Triumph
 * Voltaire – Œdipe

Poetry

 * Joseph Addison
 * Poems on Several Occasions
 * The Resurrection
 * Richardson Pack – Miscellanies in Verse and Prose
 * Alexander Pope – The Iliad of Homer iv

Births

 * February 18
 * Søren Abildgaard, Danish naturalist, author and artist (died 1791)
 * Robert Henry, Scottish historian (died 1790)
 * April 7 – Hugh Blair, Scottish rhetorician (died 1800)
 * May 16 – Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian philosopher (died 1799)
 * July 18 – Saverio Bettinelli, Italian Jesuit writer (died 1808)

Deaths

 * April 27 – Jacques Bernard, French theologian (born 1658)
 * May 16 – Jonas Danilssønn Ramus, Norwegian historian (born 1649)
 * May 22 – Gaspard Abeille, French lyric and tragic poet (born 1648)
 * July 28 – Étienne Baluze, French scholar (born 1630)
 * October 9 – Richard Cumberland, English philosopher and bishop (born 1631)
 * December 6 – Nicholas Rowe, English dramatist (born 1674)
 * December 9 – Vincenzo Coronelli Italian encyclopedist (born 1674)