1748 in literature

Events

• January – The play Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura receives its Kabuki première in Ise. In May it receives its first Edo performance at the Nakamura-za and in August first performances in Osaka at the Naka no Shibai.
• October 19 – David Garrick revives Philip Massinger's play A New Way to Pay Old Debts in London.
• November 21 – The first installment of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, also known as Fanny Hill, is published by John Cleland to raise money to free himself from the London debtors' prison. It is considered by some to be the first modern erotic novel.
• December 18 – The Royal Danish Theatre is founded, with the opening of the King's Theater in Copenhagen.

• Leonhard Euler publishes, in Berlin, one of the two works for which he will be most renowned: the Introductio in analysin infinitorum. Euler's fifth paper on nautical topics, E137, is also written in this year but not published until 1750.
• The Gospel of Matthew in the Manx language, as Yn Sushtcml scruit liorish yn Noo Mian, is the first translation of a New Testament text into that language, under the auspices of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

  New books

Prose

• George Anson – A Voyage Round the World by Richard Walton
• Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens – Thérèse philosophe
• John Cleland – Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
• Denis Diderot
• *Les Bijoux indiscrets
• *Memoires sur differents sujets de mathematique
• Eliza Haywood – Life's Progress through the Passions
• James Hervey – Meditations and Contemplations
• David Hume
• *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
• *Three Essays, Moral and Political
• Edmond Hoyle – Mr. Hoyle's Treatises of Whist, Quadrille, Piquet, Chess and Back-Gammon
• William Kenrick – The Town
• Montesquieu – De l'Esprit des lois
• Julien Offray de La Mettrie – L'Homme Machine
• Laetitia Pilkington – Memoirs
• Samuel Richardson – Clarissa, vols. ii – vii
• Thomas Sheridan – The Simile
• Tobias Smollett
• *The Adventures of Roderick Random
• *English translation of The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane by Alain-René Le Sage
• François-Vincent Toussaint – Les Mœurs
• Voltaire – Zadig
• Horace Walpole – A Second and Third Letter to the Whigs
• John Wesley – A Letter to a Person Lately Join'd with the People call'd Quakers
• Peter Whalley – An Enquiry into the Learning of Shakespeare
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – De los temblores y otros movimientos de la tierra llamados vulgarmente terremotos

  Drama

• Jean-François Marmontel – Denys le Tyran
• Edward Moore – The Foundling
• Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku and Namiki Senryū – Kanadehon Chūshingura
• Alexander Sumarokov – Gamlet: Tragediya

  Poetry

• Mark Akenside – An Ode to the Earl of Huntingdon
• Robert Dodsley – A Collection of Poems
• Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock – Der Messias
• Mary Leapor – Poems
• Ambrose Philips – Pastorals, Epistles, Odes and Other Original Poems
• James Thomson – The Castle of Indolence
• Thomas Warton – Poems

Births

• January 1 – Gottfried August Bürger, German poet
• February 15 – Jeremy Bentham, English philosopher
• April 27 – Pierre-Louis Ginguené, French author
• May 7 – Olympe de Gouges, French dramatist
• November 1 – Francesco Galeani Napione, Italian historian
• November 8 – Anne Seymour Damer, English sculptor and novelist
• December 14 – Louis-François de Bausset, French cardinal, writer and academician

• Józef Maksymilian Ossoliński, Polish politician, writer and researcher

  Deaths

• March 11 – Charles Johnson, English dramatist and publican
• April 3 – Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui, Swiss political theorist and man of letters
• April 13 – Christopher Pitt, English poet and translator
• August 27 – James Thomson, Scottish-born poet
• September 21 – John Balguy, English philosopher
• November 25 – Isaac Watts, English hymnist, theologian and logician