1718 in literature

Events

• November 1 – Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes the last of her Turkish Letters, addressed to Alexander Pope.
• November 18 – Voltaire's first play, Oedipus, premières at the Comédie-Française in Paris. This is his first use of the pseudonym. He has been released from the Bastille this year, while Marguerite De Launay, Baronne Staal, begins a two-year sentence.
• The Free-Thinker, a Whig newspaper, is founded by poet Ambrose Philips and Rev. Hugh Boulter in London.
• Laurence Eusden becomes Poet Laureate of England.
• Ludvig Holberg becomes a professor at the University of Copenhagen.

New books

Prose

• Nicholas Amhurst – Protestant Popery; or, The Convocation (part of the Bangorian Controversy)
• Daniel Defoe (attr.) – A Vindication of the Press
• Charles Gildon – The Complete Art of Poetry
• Mary Hearne – The Lover's Week
• Simon Ockley – The History of the Saracens, volume 2
• Ambrose Philips – The Free-Thinker (periodical)
• Allan Ramsay -Christ's Kirk on the Green (revised version)
• John Ray – Philosophical Letters
• John Strype – The Life and Acts of John Witgift
• John Toland – Nazarenus, or Jewish, Gentile and Mahometan Christianity
• John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester – Remains of the Earl of Rochester

Drama

• Charles Beckingham – Scipio Africanus
• John Durant Breval – The Play is the Plot
• Christopher Bullock – The Traitor
• Susanna Centlivre – A Bold Stroke for a Wife
• Charles Molloy – The Coquet
• Richard Savage – Love in a Veil
• Elkanah Settle and Lewis Theobald – The Lady's Triumph
• Voltaire – Œdipe

Poetry

• Joseph Addison
  • Poems on Several Occasions
  • The Resurrection
• Richardson Pack – Miscellanies in Verse and Prose
• Alexander Pope – The Iliad of Homer iv

Births

• February 18
  • Søren Abildgaard, Danish naturalist, author and artist (died 1791)
  • Robert Henry, Scottish historian (died 1790)
• April 7 – Hugh Blair, Scottish rhetorician (died 1800)
• May 16 – Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian philosopher (died 1799)
• July 18 – Saverio Bettinelli, Italian Jesuit writer (died 1808)

Deaths

• April 27 – Jacques Bernard, French theologian (born 1658)
• May 16 – Jonas Danilssønn Ramus, Norwegian historian (born 1649)
• May 22 – Gaspard Abeille, French lyric and tragic poet (born 1648)
• July 28 – Étienne Baluze, French scholar (born 1630)
• October 9 – Richard Cumberland, English philosopher and bishop (born 1631)
• December 6 – Nicholas Rowe, English dramatist (born 1674)
• December 9 – Vincenzo Coronelli Italian encyclopedist (born 1674)

References

References

1. University of North Carolina (1793-1962). (1945). "Research".
2. "Laurence Eusden – British poet".
3. "The Project Gutenberg eBook of Ludvig Holberg, The Founder of Norwegian Literature and an Oxford Student, by S. C. Hammer, M. A.".
4. Thomas Spencer Baynes. (1875). "The Encyclopaedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature". A. and C. Black.
5. Keith Busby. (1993). "Les Manuscrits de Chrétien de Troyes". Rodopi.
6. "Nicholas Rowe - English writer and editor".
7. "Coronelli, Vincenzo Maria".