1746 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1746.

Events

May 9 – Voltaire, on being admitted into the Académie française, gives a discours de réception in which he criticizes Boileau's poetry.
June 18 – Samuel Johnson signs a contract to compile A Dictionary of the English Language for a group of London booksellers led by Robert Dodsley at a literary breakfast.
August 28 – A Native American massacre on this day of two white families in Deerfield, Massachusetts, gives rise to the first known poem by an African American, Lucy Terry, at the time a slave of around 16: "Bars Fight, August 28, 1746".
October 4 – Irish actor Spranger Barry makes his London stage debut in the title role of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
unknown dates
*The probable first performance of Carlo Goldoni's comedy Servant of Two Masters takes place at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice.
*The oldest manuscript of Jean de Joinville's Life of Saint Louis is rediscovered in Brussels.
*Élie Catherine Fréron founds his controversial journal ''Lettres de la comtesse de...''

John Arbuthnot – Miscellanies
John Collier as "Tim Bobbin" – A View of the Lancashire Dialect by way of dialogue between Tummus... and Meary...
Zachary Grey – A Word or Two of Advice to William Warburton
James Hervey – Meditations Among the Tombs
Soame Jenyns – The Modern Fine Gentleman
Jacques Rochette de La Morlière – Angola
Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Astronomie nautique, volume 2
Tobias Smollett – Advice
Lauritz de Thurah – Den Danske Vitruvius, volume I
John Upton – Critical Observations on Shakespeare
Horace Walpole – The Beauties
John Wesley
*The Principles of a Methodist Father Explain'd
*''Sermons on Several Occasions''