1734 in literature
# 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.

## New books

### 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)
