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.

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)