1753 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1753.

Events

 * c. January – Mercy Seccombe, having emigrated from Harvard, Massachusetts to Nova Scotia, Canada, begins the earliest recorded diary by a woman in North America.
 * February 1 – Christopher Smart makes his last contribution to the Paper War of 1752–1753, with The Hilliad, which one critic, Lance Bertelsen, describes as the "loudest broadside" of the war.
 * February 2 – Jane Austen's aunt Philadelphia, mother of Eliza de Feuillide, marries Tysoe Saul Hancock in India.
 * March 25 – Voltaire leaves the court of Frederik II of Prussia
 * December – The Paper War of 1752–1753 comes to a close, with the withdrawal of everyone except John Hill

Fiction

 * Sarah Fielding – The Adventures of David Simple, Volume the Last
 * Eliza Haywood – The History of Jemmy and Jenny
 * Samuel Richardson – The History of Sir Charles Grandison
 * Tobias Smollett – The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

Drama

 * Giacomo Casanova – La Moluccheide
 * Kitty Clive – The Rehearsal
 * Samuel Foote – The Englishman in Paris
 * Richard Glover – Boadicea
 * Carlo Goldoni
 * The Mistress of the Inn (La locandiera)
 * Servant of Two Masters (Il servitore di due padroni, revised)
 * Henry Jones – The Earl of Essex
 * Edward Moore – The Gamester
 * Voltaire – L'Orphelin de la Chine
 * Edward Young – The Brothers

Poetry

 * John Armstrong – Taste
 * Thomas Cooke – An Ode on Benevolence
 * Robert Dodsley – Public Virtue
 * Thomas Franklin – Translation
 * Richard Gifford – Contemplation
 * Thomas Gray and Richard Bentley the younger – Designs by Mr. R. Bently for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray
 * Henry Jones – Merit
 * William Kenrick – The Whole Duty of Woman
 * Heyat Mahmud – Hitaggyānbāṇī; Bengali
 * Christopher Smart – The Hilliad
 * Thomas Warton – The Union
 * George Whitefield – Hymns for Social Worship

Non-fiction

 * Theophilus Cibber – The Lives of the Poets
 * Jane Collier – An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting
 * William Hogarth – The Analysis of Beauty
 * David Hume – Essays and Treatises
 * Charlotte Lennox – Shakespear Illustrated, or, The novels and histories on which the plays of Shakespear are founded, vol. 1
 * Christopher Pitt et al. – The Works of Virgil in Latin and English
 * Thomas Richards of Coychurch – Antiquæ linguæ Britannicæ thesaurus
 * Henry St. John – A Letter to Sir William Windham
 * John Toland – Hypatia
 * William Warburton – The Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion

Births

 * March 8 – William Roscoe, English historian and miscellaneous writer (died 1831)
 * March 13 – József Fabchich, Hungarian translator of Greek and lexicographer (died 1809)
 * April 8 – Pigault-Lebrun, French novelist and playwright (died 1835)
 * April 11 – Sophia Burrell, English poet and dramatist (died 1802)
 * May 8 – Phillis Wheatley, African-American poet (died 1784)
 * June 26 – Antoine de Rivarol, French Royalist writer (died 1801)
 * July 8 – Ann Yearsley, née Cromartie, English poet, writer and library proprietor (died 1806)
 * August 11 – Thomas Bewick, English engraver, writer and natural historian (died 1828)
 * September 16 – Märta Helena Reenstierna, Swedish diarist (died 1841)
 * October 15 – Elizabeth Inchbald, English novelist, dramatist and actress (died 1821)
 * October 16 – Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, German Protestant theologian (died 1827)

Deaths

 * January 14 – Bishop George Berkeley, Irish philosopher (born 1685)
 * May 11 – Jean-Joseph Languet de Gergy, French theologian (born 1677)
 * May 23 – Franciszka Urszula Radziwiłłowa, Polish dramatist (born 1705)
 * June 13 – Marie Huber, Swiss theologian, editor and translator (born 1695)
 * September 18 – Hristofor Zhefarovich, Macedonian artist and poet (date of birth unknown)
 * November – Giuseppe Valentini, Italian poet, composer and painter (born 1681)
 * November 24 – Nicholas Mann, English antiquarian (date of birth unknown)
 * Unknown dates
 * John Richardson, English Quaker preacher and autobiographer (born 1667)