1740 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1740.

Events

Autumn – John Cleland leaves government service in Bombay to return to Britain.
November 6 – Samuel Richardson's epistolary novel Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded is published anonymously in London in two volumes, rapidly becoming a popular work that inspires many imitations, translations and adaptations.
December 20 – Start of a revival in the London theatre of Shakespeare plays featuring actresses in travesti roles, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Hannah Pritchard as Rosalind in As You Like It, a play not performed for at least 40, and probably nearer 100, years.
unknown dates
*Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve publishes La Belle et la Bête, the oldest known variant of the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, in La Jeune Américaine, et les contes marins.
*Thomas Witherby establishes a stationery business in London, specialising in printing and publishing for the marine insurance industry. By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it will claim as the Witherby Publishing Group to be the oldest independent publisher in the English-speaking world.

Johann Jakob Bodmer – Von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie
Daniel Defoe – The Life and Adventures of Mrs. Christian Davies, Commonly Call'd Mother Ross
John Dyer – The Ruins of Rome
Richard Glover – Admiral Hosier's Ghost
David Hume – An Abstract of... A Treatise of Human Nature
William Law
*An Earnest and Serious Answer to Dr. Trapp's Discourse
*An Appeal to all that Doubt, or Disbelieve the Truths of the Gospel
William Oldys – The Life of Sir Walter Raleigh
Thomas Pellow – The History of the Long Captivity and Adventures of Thomas Pellow in South-Barbary
Antoine François Prévost – Histoire d'une Grecque moderne
William Pulteney – An Epistle from L--- to Lord C-------d
Samuel Richardson – Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke – The Idea of a Patriot King
Pu Songling – Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio
William Stukeley – Stonehenge: A temple restor'd to the British Druids
Emanuel Swedenborg – Economy of the Animal Kingdom
Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve – La Jeune Américaine, et les contes marins
William Warburton – A Vindication of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man
George Whitefield – ''A Short Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend George Whitefield''

February 15 – Juan Andrés, Spanish historian
June 2 – Marquis de Sade, French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer
June 6 – Louis-Sébastien Mercier, French dramatist and writer
June 27 – James Woodforde, English diarist and cleric
August 18 – Giovanni Cristofano Amaduzzi, Italian philologist
September 2 – Johann Georg Jacobi, German poet
September 12 – Johann Heinrich Jung, German novelist and autobiographer
September 17 – John Cartwright, English political reformer and naval officer
October 29 – James Boswell, Scottish diarist, writer and autobiographer
November 4 – Augustus Montague Toplady, English poet, theologian and hymnist
November 21 – Charlotte Baden, Danish feminist and letter-writer
Unknown dates
*Margaret Bingham, English poet and painter
*Jean-Louis de Lolme, Swiss writer in French and English
Probable
*Charlotte Brooke, Irish writer
*Dionisie Eclesiarhul, Wallachian scribe, chronicler and illustrator