1734 in literature

Events

• January – Le Cabinet du Philosophe, a new periodical by Pierre de Marivaux, is unsuccessfully launched; it is discontinued in April.
• June 10 – Copies of Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques sur les Anglais are burned, and a warrant is issued for the author's arrest.
• November – George Faulkner begins publication of an edition of Jonathan Swift's Works in Dublin with a corrected text.
• Manoel da Assumpcam begins writing his grammar of the Bengali language.
• Göttingen State and University Library is established.

  New books

Fiction

• Pierre de Marivaux – Le Paysan parvenu part one

  Drama

• Henry Carey, as "Benjamin Bounce"
• *Chrononhotonthologos
• *The Dragon of Wantley
• Henry Fielding
• *Don Quixote in England
• *The Intriguing Chambermaid
• Carlo Goldoni – Belisario
• James Miller – The Mother-in-Law
• James Ralph – The Cornish Squire
• António José da Silva – Esopaida
• James Thomson – The Tragedy of Sophonisba

  Poetry

• Jean Adam – Miscellany Poems
• Mary Barber – Poems
• Stephen Duck – Truth and Falsehood
• William Dunkin
• *The Lover's Web
• *The Poet's Prayer
• Alexander Pope
• *Essay on Man
• *An Epistle to Lord Cobham
• *The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace
• *Sober Advice from Horace
• Jonathan Swift – A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed

  Non-fiction

• Anonymous – A Rap at the Rhapsody
• Joseph Addison – A Discourse on Antient and Modern Learning
• John Arbuthnot – Gnothi Seauton: Know Yourself
• Francis Atterbury – Sermons
• George Berkeley – The Analyst
• Henry Brooke – Design and Beauty: an Epistle
• Isaac Hawkins Browne – On Design and Beauty
• Dimitrie Cantemir – History of the Growth and Decay of the Ottoman Empire
• Robert Dodsley – An Epistle to Mr. Pope
• John Jortin – Remarks on Spenser's Poems
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – The Dean's Provocation for Writing the Lady's Dressing-Room
• Karl Ludwig von Pöllnitz – Mémoires
• Jonathan Richardson – Explanatory Notes on Milton's Paradise Lost
• George Sale – The Koran
• Emanuel Swedenborg
• *First Principles of Natural Things
• *Opera philosophica et mineralia
• *The Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation
• Joseph Trapp – Thoughts Upon the Four Last Things
• Voltaire – Lettres anglaises

  Births

• January 10 – Fleury Mesplet, French-born Canadian writer and newspaper publisher
• October 23 – Nicolas-Edme Rétif, French novelist
• December 31 – Claude Joseph Dorat, French writer
• Unknown dates
• *Catharina Ahlgren, Swedish writer
• *Robert Aitken, Scottish-born American printer and publisher

  Deaths

• January 6 – John Dennis, English dramatist and critic
• February 24 – Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier, French writer of fairy tales and salonnière
• March 1 – Roger North, English biographer and lawyer
• April 25 – Johann Conrad Dippel, German theologian
• May – Richard Cantillon, Irish-born French economist
• September 17 – Thomas Fuller, English man of letters and proverb collector
• October – Thomas Lloyd, Welsh lexicographer
• October 18 – James Moore Smythe, English dramatist and fop