1723 in literature

Events

• March – Voltaire makes an agreement with Abraham Viret to allow his work to be printed in Rouen.
• July – A new edition of Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees is presented as a public nuisance by the Grand Jury of Middlesex, England, to the Court of King's Bench. Mandeville escapes prosecution.
• November – After attending a party at the home of the marquis des Maisons, Voltaire contracts smallpox.
• unknown date – The book collection of Samuel Pepys, including his Diary, is transferred to the Pepys Library at his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge, in accordance with his will.

  New books

Fiction

• Penelope Aubin – The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, an English lady; taken from her own memoirs
• Jane Barker – A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies
• Thomas-Simon Gueullette – Les Aventures merveilleuses du mandarin Fum-Hoam, contes chinois
• Eliza Haywood – Idalia: Or, the Unfortunate Mistress. A Novel. Written by Mrs. Eliza Haywood
• Anton Josef Kirchweger – Aurea Catena Homeri
• Margrethe Lasson – Den beklædte Sandhed
• John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham – The Works of John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, Marquis of Normanby, and Duke of Buckingham

  Drama

• Susanna Centlivre – The Artifice
• Elijah Fenton – Marianne
• Eliza Haywood – A Wife to be Let
• Ludvig Holberg – Erasmus Montanus
• Hildebrand Jacob – The Fatal Constancy
• Charles Johnson – Love in a Forest
• Pierre de Marivaux – La Double Inconstance
• Ambrose Philips – Humfrey, Duke of Gloucester: a tragedy

  Poetry

• Sir Richard Blackmore – Alfred: an epick poem
• David Mallet – William and Margaret
• William Meston – Knight of the Kirk
• Ambrose Philips – Ode on the Death of William, Earl of Cowper
• Matthew Prior
• *Down-Hall
• *The Turtle and the Sparrow
• Allan Ramsay – The Tea-Table Miscellany, Vol. 1
• Voltaire – La Henriade
• Ned Ward – Nuptial Dialogues and Debates, 3rd ed.

  Non-fiction

• James Anderson – The Constitutions of the Free-Masons
• Henry Baker – An Invocation of Health: a poem
• Offspring Blackall, Bishop of Exeter – Collected Works
• Pietro Giannone – Storia civile del regno di Napoli
• Bernard de Mandeville – A Search into the Nature of Society
• Thomas Dempster – De Etruria regali libri VII
• Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard – Cato's Letters
• John Nott – The Cooks and Confectioners Dictionary or, the Accomplish'd Housewives Companion

  Births

• January 21 – Baron d'Holbach, German-born French philosopher and encyclopedist
• February 23 – Richard Price, Welsh-born philosopher
• February 24 – John Burgoyne, English soldier and dramatist
• June 5 – Adam Smith, Scottish economist
• June 20 – Adam Ferguson, Scottish philosopher and historian
• July 11 – Jean-François Marmontel, French novelist and dramatist
• September 30 – William Hutton, English local historian and poet
• November 8 – John Byron, English vice-admiral and memoirist
• November 30 – William Livingston, American political writer and politician
• December 26 – Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm, German-born French philosopher and encyclopedist

  Deaths

• February 26 – Thomas d'Urfey, English dramatist
• March 13 – René Auguste Constantin de Renneville, French Protestant poet and historian
• March 15 – Johann Christian Günther, German poet
• May 11 – Jean Galbert de Campistron, French dramatist
• June 8 – Isaac Chayyim Cantarini, Italian poet, physician and preacher
• July 28 – Mariana Alcoforado, Portuguese nun
• August 21 – Dimitrie Cantemir, Romanian author
• September 23 – Jacques Basnage, French Protestant poet, linguist and preacher
• December 1 – Susanna Centlivre, English dramatist
• December 17 – John Trenchard, English politician and writer