1726 in literature

Events

• February – Lavinia Fenton makes her stage debut as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan at the Haymarket Theatre in London.
• April 5 – Publication takes place in London of Lewis Theobald's Shakespeare Restored, or A Specimen of the Many Errors As Well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his Late Edition of this Poet; Designed Not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet published.
• May 10 – Voltaire leaves France for a three-year stay in Britain.
• May 25 – Britain's first circulating library is opened in Edinburgh by the poet and bookseller Allan Ramsay.
• July – Françoise-Louise de Warens converts to Catholicism to receive a church pension, and annuls her marriage.
• October 28 – Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels is published in London, anonymously in two volumes, as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. It sells out in a week.
• unknown dates
• *The Teatro Valle opens in Rome.
• *The Gujin Tushu Jicheng, an immense Chinese encyclopedia, is printed using copper-based movable type printing.

  New books

Fiction

• Penelope Aubin – The Life and Adventures of the Lady Lucy
• Jane Barker – The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen
• William Rufus Chetwood – The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle
• Eliza Haywood
• *The City Jilt
• *The Mercenary Lover
• Jonathan Swift
• *Gulliver's Travels
• *Cadenus and Vanessa
• Lewis Theobald – Shakespeare Restored
• José Francisco de Isla – Papeles critico-apologéticos
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – El ermitaño y Torres
• Martín Sarmiento – Reflexiones sobre el Diccionario de la lengua castellana que compuso la Real Academia en el año de 1726

  Drama

• Venkata Ajapura – Mairavana Kalaga
• Aaron Hill – The Fatal Extravagance
• Thomas Southerne – Money the Mistress
• Leonard Welsted – The Dissembling Wanton

  Poetry

• Alexander Pope – The Odyssey of Homer
• Richard Savage – Miscellaneous Poems
• William Somervile – Occasional Poems
• Jonathan Swift – Cadenus and Vanessa
• James Thomson – Winter

  Non-fiction

• John Balguy – A letter to a Deist concerning the Beauty and Excellency of Moral Virtue, and the Support and Improvement which it receives from the Christian Religion
• Joseph Butler – Fifteen Sermons
• Anthony Collins – The Scheme of Literal Prophecy
• Corporate authorship – The Craftsman
• Daniel Defoe
• *The Political History of the Devil
• *A System of Magick
• John Dennis – The Stage Defended
• William Law
• *The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage
• *A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection
• Samuel Penhallow – History of the Wars of New-England with the Eastern Indians
• William Penn
• *Fruits of a Father's Love
• *A Collection of the Works of William Penn
• * – The Discovery
• George Shelvocke – A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea
• Joseph Spence – An Essay on Pope's Odyssey

  Births

• March 11 – Louise d'Épinay, French writer
• April 7 – Charles Burney, English historian of music and composer
• June 14 – Thomas Pennant, Welsh naturalist and writer
• September 2 – John Howard, English philanthropist and writer
• September 25 – Angelo Maria Bandini, Italian author and librarian
• September 26 – John H. D. Anderson, Scottish natural philosopher

  Deaths

• March 24 – Daniel Whitby, English theologian
• March 26 – Sir John Vanbrugh, English dramatist and architect
• April 5 – Ludwig Babenstuber, German theologian and philosopher
• April 26 – Jeremy Collier, English theologian and critic
• May 20 – Nicholas Brady, Irish poet
• July 5 – Domenico Viva, Italian theologian
• July 6 – Humfrey Wanley, English librarian and palaeographer
• August 12 – Charles Shadwell, English dramatist
• December 2 – Samuel Penhallow, English historian
• December 11 – Jacques Bouillart, French Benedictine historian