1713 in literature

Events

• March 12 – Richard Steele and Joseph Addison found the short-lived The Guardian; in the same year, Steele founds another periodical, ostensibly as a sequel to it, the likewise short-lived The Englishman.
• April 14 – The first performance is given in London of Addison's libertarian play Cato, a Tragedy, which will be influential on both sides of the Atlantic.
• October – Alexander Pope announces that he is to begin a definitive translation of the works of Homer.
• unknown date – Vitsentzos Kornaros's early 17th-century Cretan romantic epic poem Erotokritos, is printed, for the first time, in Venice.

  New books

Prose

• John Arbuthnot – Proposals for printing a very curious discourse... a treatise of the art of political lying, with an abstract of the first volume
• Jane Barker – The Amours of Bosvil and Galesia
• Richard Bentley – Remarks upon a Late Discourse of Free-thinking
• George Berkeley – Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous
• Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux – Dialogue sur les héros de roman
• Robert Challe – Les Illustres Françaises
• Anthony Collins – A Discourse of Free-thinking
• Daniel Defoe
• *And What if the Pretender Should Come?
• *A General History of Trade
• *Reasons Against the Succession of the House of Hanover
• John Dennis – Remarks upon Cato
• Abel Evans – Vertumnus
• John Gay
• *Rural Sports
• *The Fan
• Edmund Gibson – Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglicani
• Antoine Hamilton – Mémoires du comte de Gramont
• John Hughes – Letters of Abelard and Heloise
• Henri Joutel – Journal historique du dernier voyage que feu M. de La Sale fit dans le golfe de Mexique
• Thomas Parnell – An Essay on the Different Stiles of Poetry
• Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre – Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe
• Jonathan Swift
• *Mr. C--n's Discourse of Free-thinking, Put into Plain English
• *Part of the Seventh Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
• John Toland – Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews in Great Britain and Ireland
• Ned Ward – The History of the Grand Rebellion

  Drama

• Joseph Addison – Cato, a Tragedy
• José de Cañizares – Don Juan de Espina en Milán
• John Gay – The Wife of Bath
• William Taverner – The Female Advocates

  Poetry

• Henry Carey – Poems on Several Occasions
• Anne Finch – Miscellany Poems on Several Occasions
• Alexander Pope
• *Windsor Forest
• *Ode for Musick
• Edward Young
• *An Epistle to Lord Lansdowne
• *A Poem on the Last Day

Births

• January 13 – Charlotte Charke, English novelist, dramatist and actress
• February 20 – Anna Maria Elvia, Swedish poet
• April 12 – Guillaume Thomas François Raynal, French writer
• June 11 – Edward Capell, English Shakespeare scholar
• July 9 – John Newbery, English publisher and writer for children
• October 5 – Denis Diderot, French encyclopedist
• October 25 – Marie Jeanne Riccoboni, French novelist and actress
• November 24 – Laurence Sterne, Irish-born novelist and cleric
• December – Jonathan Toup, English classicist and critic

  Deaths

• January 5 – Jean Chardin, French travel writer
• January 11 – Pierre Jurieu, French Protestant leader and religious writer
• May 20 – Thomas Sprat, English writer, poet and bishop
• September 18 – Samuel Cobb, English poet and critic
• October 30 – John Barret, English religious writer and Presbyterian minister
• December 14 – Thomas Rymer, English Historiographer Royal