1753 in literature

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

  New books

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
• *Servant of Two Masters
• 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
• March 13 – József Fabchich, Hungarian translator of Greek and lexicographer
• April 8 – Pigault-Lebrun, French novelist and playwright
• April 11 – Sophia Burrell, English poet and dramatist
• May 8 – Phillis Wheatley, African-American poet
• June 26 – Antoine de Rivarol, French Royalist writer
• July 8 – Ann Yearsley, née Cromartie, English poet, writer and library proprietor
• August 11 – Thomas Bewick, English engraver, writer and natural historian
• September 16 – Märta Helena Reenstierna, Swedish diarist
• October 15 – Elizabeth Inchbald, English novelist, dramatist and actress
• October 16 – Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, German Protestant theologian

  Deaths

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