1737 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1737.

Events

• March 2 – Samuel Johnson and his former pupil David Garrick leave Lichfield to seek their fortunes in London.
• Haymarket. The anonymous satire The Golden Rump
  (which may never have existed in full) is used as ammunition by the Act's proponents.
• The News Letter is first published in Belfast by Francis Joy, making it the world's oldest existing English newspaper.^[1]
• October – The first professional stage production in the Swedish language by native-born actors is given in Sweden, of the comedy Den Svenska Sprätthöken at the Bollhuset in Stockholm.
• November 20 – Caroline of Ansbach, Queen Consort of Great Britain and a significant patron of the arts, dies.
• unknown date – The poet Richard Jago becomes curate of Snitterfield.

New books

Prose

• Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant – Amusement philosophique sur le language des bêtes (Philosophical Amusements on the Language of the Animals)
• Alexander Cruden – A Complete Concordance to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament
• Philip Doddridge – Submission to Divine Providence in the Death of Children
• Stephen Duck – The Vision
• A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Works of God
• Étienne Fourmont – Meditationes Sinicae
• William Law – A Demonstration of the Gross and Fundamental Errors of a Late Book (an answer to Benjamin Hoadly from 1735)
• Marguerite de Lubert – Tecserion
• William Oldys – The British Librarian
• Elizabeth Singer Rowe – Devout Exercises of the Heart
• Sarah Stone – A Complete Practice of Midwifery^[2]
• Jan Swammerdam – Biblia Naturae^[3]
• Jonathan Swift – A Proposal for Giving Badges to the Beggars in all the Parishes of Dublin
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – Médico para el bolsillo^[4]

Drama

• The Dragon of Wantley
  (burlesque opera adaptation)
• Robert Dodsley – The King and the Miller of Mansfield
• Henry Fielding
  • The Historical Register for the Year 1736
  • Eurydice Hiss'd, or a Word to the Wise
• Robert Gould (died 1709) – Innocence Distress'd (published; written c. 1689 but never performed)
• William Havard – King Charles I
• John Hewitt – A Tutor for the Beaus
• Samuel Johnson – All Alive and Merry
• George Lillo – Fatal Curiosity
• Francis Lynch – The Independent Patriot
• Pierre de Marivaux – Les Fausses Confidences
• James Miller – The Universal Passion (adapted from Much Ado About Nothing)

Poetry

• Richard Glover – Leonidas
• Matthew Green – The Spleen
• Ignacio de Luzán – Poética
• Alexander Pope
  • Horace His Ode to Venus
  • The Second Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated
  • The First Epistle of the Second Book of Horace, Imitated
  • The Works of Alexander Pope vols. v-vi
• William Shenstone – Poems
• Prince Thammathibet – The Legend of Phra Malai (พระมาลัยคำหลวง, Phra Malai)
• Voltaire – Défense du Mondain ou l'apologie du luxe ("Defense of the Worldling or an Apology for Luxury"), a poetic response to criticism of his Le Mondain^[5]
• John Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns

Births

• January 19 – Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, French novelist and travel writer (died 1814)
• January 29 – Thomas Paine, English free thinker and revolutionary (died 1809)
• February 22 – Anne Ford, English writer, singer and musician (died 1824)
• April 18 – William Hazlitt Sr., Irish religious writer, radical and Unitarian minister (died 1820)
• April 27 – Edward Gibbon, English historian (died 1794)
• May 11 (baptised) – Richard Chandler, English antiquary (died 1810)
• unknown dates
  • Frances Abington, née Barton, English actress (died 1815)
  • Nicolas Fernández de Moratín, Spanish literary reformer (died 1780
    )

• February 21 – Elizabeth Rowe, English dramatist and poet (born 1674)^[6]
• May –
  Jean Alphonse Turretin, Swiss theologian (born 1671
  )
• May 4 – Eustace Budgell, English satirist (suicide, born 1686)^[7]
• May 17 – Claude Buffier, philosopher and historian (born 1661)
• Matthieu Marais, French memoirist (born 1664
  )
• August 28 – John Hutchinson, theologian (born 1674)
• September 18 – Jane Fearon, English Quaker pamphleteer (born 1654 or 1656)
• October 18 – Abel Evans, English poet (born 1679)
• unknown dates – Matthew Green, English poet (born 1696)

References