1738 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1738.

Events

 * April 11 – Robert Blair marries Isabella Law.
 * July 10 – Richard Dawes is appointed Master of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.
 * August – Laurence Sterne is ordained a priest, and in the autumn becomes vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire.
 * August 8 – Jonathan Swift writes to Alexander Pope describing the deterioration in his mental condition; Swift will eventually be given into the care of a legal guardian.
 * September 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer (published 1785).

Prose

 * James Anderson – The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, 2nd ed.
 * Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens – Jewish Letters (published anonymously)
 * John Banks – Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose
 * Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten – De ordine in audiendis philosophicis per triennium academicum quaedam praefatus acroases proximae aestati destinatas indicit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
 * Louis de Beaufort – Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq prèmiers siècles de l'histoire romaine
 * Robert Dodsley – The Art of Preaching
 * Marie Huber – Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l'homme (Letters Concerning the Religion Essential to Man)
 * David Hume (anonymously) – A Treatise of Human Nature (dated 1739)
 * Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Sur la figure de la terre
 * Margareta Momma – Samtal emellan Argi Skugga och en obekant Fruentimbers Skugga (Conversation between the Shadow of Argus and the Unfamiliar Shadow of a Female)
 * Francis Moore – Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa
 * Abbé Prévost – Memoirs of a Man of Quality (anonymous English translation)
 * Thomas Shaw – Travels in Barbary and the Levant
 * Jonathan Swift
 * The Beasts Confession to the Priest
 * A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
 * William Warburton
 * The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated
 * A Vindication of the author of the Divine Legation of Moses
 * George Whitefield – A Journal of a Voyage from London to Savannah in Georgia
 * Diego de Torres Villarroel
 * Anatomía de todo lo visible e invisible
 * Vida ejemplar de la venerable madre Gregoria Francisca de Santa Teresa

Drama

 * Robert Dodsley – Sir John Cockle at Court
 * Carlo Goldoni
 * Momolo Cortesan
 * L'uomo di mondo
 * Sir Hildebrand Jacob
 * The Happy Constancy
 * The Prodigal Reformed
 * The Trial of Conjugal Love
 * George Lillo – Marina (adapted from Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
 * Charles Marsh – Amasis, King of Egypt
 * James Miller –
 * Art and Nature
 * The Coffee House
 * Alexis Piron – La Metromanie
 * António José da Silva – Precipicio de Faetonte
 * James Thomson – Agamemnon

Poetry

 * Mark Akenside (anonymously) – A British Philippic
 * Elizabeth Carter (anonymously) – Poems Upon Particular Occasions
 * John Gay – Fables: Volume the Second
 * Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas líricas
 * Samuel Johnson – London, A Poem, on the Third Satire of Juvenal
 * Alexander Pope
 * The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
 * The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
 * (with Jonathan Swift) An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace
 * One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight
 * The Universal Prayer
 * One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: Dialogue II
 * James Thomson – The Works of Mr Thomson
 * Diego de Torres Villarroel – Juguetes de Talia, entretenimiento del numen
 * John Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (first English edition)

Births

 * February 9 (baptized) – Mary Whateley, English poet and playwright (died 1825)
 * May 9 – John Wolcot, English satirist and poet (died 1819)
 * May 12 – Jonathan Boucher, English philologist (died 1804)
 * May 27 – Moritz August von Thümmel, German humorist and satirical author (died 1817)
 * June 21 – Gottlieb Christoph Harless, German bibliographer (died 1815)
 * July 24 – Betje Wolff, Dutch novelist (died 1804)
 * November 15 – Joseph Johnson, English publisher (died 1809)
 * December 4 – Karl Friedrich Kretschmann, German poet, playwright and storyteller (died 1809)
 * unknown date – Manuel Lassala, Spanish dramatist and philosopher (died 1806)

Deaths

 * January 6 – Jean-Baptiste Labat, French polymath (born 1663)
 * March – Margrethe Lasson, Danish novelist (born 1659)
 * April 25 – Giacomo Laderchi, Italian ecclesiastical historian (born c. 1678)
 * June 5 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant theologian (born 1659)
 * July 8 – Jean-Pierre Nicéron, French lexicographer (born 1685)
 * September 3 or 4 – George Lillo, English playwright (born 1691)
 * September 23 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist writer (born 1668)
 * November 10 – John Asgill, English pamphleteer (born 1659)