1738 in literature

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.

  New books

Prose

• 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
• Alexander Cruden – A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament
• 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

  Drama

• Robert Dodsley – Sir John Cockle at Court
• Carlo Goldoni
• *Momolo Cortesan
• *L'uomo di mondo
• Sir Hildebrand Jacob
• *The Happy Constancy
• *The Prodigal Reformed
• *The Trial of Conjugal Love
• George Lillo – Marina
• James Miller – Art and Nature
• Alexis Piron – La Metromanie
• António José da Silva – Precipicio de Faetonte
• James Thomson – Agamemnon

  Poetry

• Mark Akenside – A British Philippic
• Elizabeth Carter – Poems Upon Particular Occasions
• John Gay – Fables: Volume the Second
• Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas líricas
• Samuel Johnson – London, A Poem, on the Third Satire of Juvenal
• Alexander Pope
• *The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
• *The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
• * An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace
• *One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight
• *The Universal Prayer
• *One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: Dialogue II
• James Thomson – The Works of Mr Thomson
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – Juguetes de Talia, entretenimiento del numen
• John Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns

  Births

• 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

  Deaths

• January 6 – Jean-Baptiste Labat, French polymath
• March – Margrethe Lasson, Danish novelist
• April 25 – Giacomo Laderchi, Italian ecclesiastical historian
• June 5 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant theologian
• July 8 – Jean-Pierre Nicéron, French lexicographer
• September 3 or 4 – George Lillo, English playwright
• September 23 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist writer
• November 10 – John Asgill, English pamphleteer