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.

James Anderson – The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, 2nd ed.
Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens – Jewish Letters
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
David Hume – A Treatise of Human Nature
Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Sur la figure de la terre
Margareta Momma – Samtal emellan Argi Skugga och en obekant Fruentimbers Skugga
Francis Moore – Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa
Abbé Prévost – Memoirs of a Man of Quality
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''

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