1745 in literature

Events

• February – London theatres stage competing productions of Shakespeare's King John in response to the Jacobite rising begun this summer by Bonnie Prince Charlie. David Garrick's production of the original text at Drury Lane contrasts with Colley Cibber's adaptation Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John at Covent Garden. The rivalry anticipates "the Romeo and Juliet war" of five years later.
• September 21 – Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock delivers a speech on epic poetry – Abschiedsrede über die epische Poesie, kultur- und literargeschichtlich erläutert – to mark his leaving school.
• October 19 – Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist and Dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, dies aged 78. His body is laid out in public for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, and he is buried, in accordance with his wishes, in his cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, with his own epitaph: Ubi sæva Indignatio/Ulterius/Cor lacerare nequit.
• November 17 – In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg of the Moravian Church asks innkeeper Samuel Powell to begin importing and distributing books, the origins of a bookstore still in existence in 2007.

  New books

Prose

• Mark Akenside – Odes
• Elizabeth Boyd - The Snail: Or the Lady's Lubrications
• John Brown – An Essay on Satire
• Comte de Caylus – Cinq contes de fées
• John Gilbert Cooper – The Power of Harmony
• Philip Doddridge – The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul
• Henry Fielding
• *A Serious Address to the People of Great Britain
• *The True Patriot
• Samuel Johnson
• *Miscellaneous Observations on the Tragedy of Macbeth
• *Proposals for Printing a New Edition of the Plays of William Shakespear
• Jean-Bernard, abbé Le Blanc – Lettres d'un François
• Samuel Madden – Boulter's Monument
• Pierre de Marivaux – La Vie de Marianne
• Moses Mendes – Henry and Blanche
• Glocester Ridley – Jovi Eleutherio
• Thomas Scott – England's Danger and Duty
• Jonathan Swift – Directions to Servants
• William Thompson – Sickness
• Enrique Flórez – Mapa de todos los sitios de batallas que tuvieron los romanos en España

  Drama

• Colley Cibber – Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John
• Robert Dodsley – Rex et Pontifex
• Luise Gottsched – Das Testament
• Charles Jennens – Belshazzar
• James Miller – The Picture
• James Thomson – Tancred and Sigismunda

  Poetry

Births

• January 4 – Johann Jakob Griesbach, German Biblical commentator
• February 2
• *John Nichols, English printer
• *Hannah More, English poet, religious writer and philanthropist
• February 20 – Henry James Pye, English poet
• July 26 – Henry Mackenzie, Scottish novelist, writer and poet
• September – Karl von Marinelli, Austrian actor and dramatist
• September 3 – Charles Victor de Bonstetten, Swiss liberal writer
• December 10 – Thomas Holcroft English dramatist and miscellanist
• Unknown date – William Crowe, English poet
• Probable year of birth – Olaudah Equiano, African writer

Deaths

• May 13 – Charles Coffey, Irish dramatist and composer
• July 11 – Pierre Desmaiseaux, Exiled French biographer
• October 19 – Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist
• December 16 – Pierre Desfontaines, French journalist and historian
• Unknown dates
• *William Broome, English poet and translator
• *William Meston, Scottish poet
• *David Wilkins, Prussian-born English orientalist

  In literature

• Walter Scott's novel Waverley and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Master of Ballantrae are set during the Jacobite rising of 1745.