1734 in literature

This article is a summary of the major literary events and publications of 1734.

Events

 * January – Le Cabinet du Philosophe, a new periodical by Pierre de Marivaux, is unsuccessfully launched; it is discontinued in April.
 * June 10 – Copies of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais (Letters on the English) are burned, and a warrant is issued for the author's arrest.
 * November – George Faulkner begins publication of an edition of Jonathan Swift's Works in Dublin with a corrected text.
 * Manoel da Assumpcam begins writing his grammar of the Bengali language.
 * Göttingen State and University Library is established.

Fiction

 * Pierre de Marivaux – Le Paysan parvenu (The Fortunate Peasant) part one

Drama

 * Henry Carey, as "Benjamin Bounce" – Chrononhotonthologos (satire on bombastic tragedy)
 * William Duncombe – Junius Brutus
 * Henry Fielding
 * Don Quixote in England
 * The Intriguing Chambermaid
 * Carlo Goldoni – Belisario
 * John Hewitt – Fatal Falsehood
 * James Miller – The Mother-in-Law (adapted from Molière's Le Malade imaginaire and Monsieur de Pourceaugnac)
 * William Popple – The Lady's Revenge
 * James Ralph – The Cornish Squire
 * António José da Silva – Esopaida
 * James Thomson – The Tragedy of Sophonisba

Poetry

 * Jean Adam – Miscellany Poems
 * Mary Barber – Poems
 * Stephen Duck – Truth and Falsehood
 * William Dunkin
 * The Lover's Web
 * The Poet's Prayer
 * Alexander Pope
 * Essay on Man
 * An Epistle to Lord Cobham ("Moral Epistle I")
 * The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace
 * Sober Advice from Horace
 * Jonathan Swift – A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed

Non-fiction

 * Anonymous – A Rap at the Rhapsody (on Swift's 1733 On Poetry)
 * Joseph Addison (died 1719) – A Discourse on Antient and Modern Learning
 * John Arbuthnot – Gnothi Seauton: Know Yourself
 * Francis Atterbury – Sermons
 * George Berkeley – The Analyst
 * Henry Brooke – Design and Beauty: an Epistle
 * Isaac Hawkins Browne – On Design and Beauty
 * Dimitrie Cantemir – History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire (first publication)
 * Robert Dodsley – An Epistle to Mr. Pope
 * John Jortin – Remarks on Spenser's Poems
 * Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – The Dean's Provocation for Writing the Lady's Dressing-Room (on Swift's "The Lady's Dressing Room")
 * Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz – Mémoires
 * Jonathan Richardson – Explanatory Notes on Milton's Paradise Lost
 * George Sale – The Koran
 * Emanuel Swedenborg
 * First Principles of Natural Things
 * Opera philosophica et mineralia
 * The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation
 * Joseph Trapp – Thoughts Upon the Four Last Things ("Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell")
 * Voltaire – Lettres anglaises

Births

 * January 10 – Fleury Mesplet, French-born Canadian writer and newspaper publisher (died 1794
 * July 25 – Ueda Akinari, Japanese poet and novelist (died 1809)
 * October 23 – Nicolas-Edme Rétif, French novelist (died 1806)
 * December 31 – Claude Joseph Dorat (Le Chevalier Dorat), French writer (died 1780)
 * Unknown dates
 * Catharina Ahlgren, Swedish writer (died 1800)
 * Robert Aitken, Scottish-born American printer and publisher (died 1802)

Deaths

 * January 6 – John Dennis, English dramatist and critic (born 1658)
 * February 24 – Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, French writer of fairy tales and salonnière (born 1664)
 * March 1 – Roger North, English biographer and lawyer (born 1653)
 * April 25 – Johann Konrad Dippel, German theologian (born 1673)
 * May – Richard Cantillon, Irish-born French economist (born 1680)
 * September 17 – Thomas Fuller, English man of letters and proverb collector (born 1654)
 * October – Thomas Lloyd, Welsh lexicographer (born c. 1673)
 * October 18 – James Moore Smythe, English dramatist and fop (born 1702)