1746 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
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In poetry 1743 1744 1745 1746 1747 1748 1749
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1746.

Events

• May 9 – Voltaire, on being admitted into the Académie française, gives a discours de réception in which he criticizes Boileau's poetry.
• June – Samuel Johnson is commissioned to compile A Dictionary of the English Language by a group of London booksellers.
• August 28 – A Native American massacre of two white families in Deerfield, Massachusetts, this day gives rise to the first known poem by an African American, Lucy Terry (at this time a slave aged around 16), "Bars Fight, August 28, 1746".
• October 4 – Irish actor Spranger Barry makes his London stage debut in the title role of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (with Charles Macklin as Iago).
• Probable first performance of Carlo Goldoni's comedy Servant of Two Masters (Italian: Il servitore di due padronicode: it is deprecated ), at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice.
• The oldest manuscript of Jean de Joinville's Life of Saint Louis is rediscovered in Brussels.
• Élie Catherine Fréron founds his controversial journal Lettres de la comtesse de...

New books

• John Arbuthnot - Miscellanies (posthumous)
• John Collier as "Tim Bobbin" - A View of the Lancashire Dialect
• William Collins - Odes
• Thomas Cooke - A Hymn to Liberty
• Zachary Grey - A Word or Two of Advice to William Warburton
• James Hervey - Meditations Among the Tombs
• Soame Jenyns - The Modern Fine Gentleman
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis - Astronomie nautique, volume 2
• Tobias Smollett - Advice
• Lauritz de Thurah - Den Danske Vitruvius, volume I
• John Upton - Critical Observations on Shakespeare
• Horace Walpole - The Beauties
• Joseph Warton - Odes on Various Subjects
• John Wesley
  • The Principles of a Methodist Father Explain'd
  • Sermons on Several Occasions

New drama

• Pierre de Marivaux - Le Préjugé vaincu
• Takeda Izumo I, Takeda Izumo II, Namiki Sōsuke and Miyoshi Shōraku - Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami

Poetry

• Thomas Blacklock - Poems
• See also 1746 in poetry

Births

• January 12 – Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss educational reformer (died 1827)
• March 27 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet (died 1767)
• April 3 – Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, French fantasy novelist (died 1805)
• December 21 – José de la Cruz (Huseng Sisiw), Filipino writer (died 1829)
• Unknown date – Victor d'Hupay, French philosopher (died 1818)

Deaths

• February 4 – Robert Blair, Scottish member of the "Graveyard poets" (born 1699)
• May 22 – Thomas Southerne, Irish dramatist (born 1660)
• November 12 – Mary Leapor, English kitchenmaid poet (born 1722; died of measles)
• December 6 – Lady Grizel Baillie, Scottish poet (born 1665)
• Unknown dates
  • Anton Josef Kirchweger, Latin Pietist author (unknown birth year)
  • Frederic Count de Thoms, German biographer of King Louis XIV of France and art collector (born 1669)

In fiction

• April 16 – The Battle of Culloden features in the following novels
  • D. K. Broster - The Flight of the Heron (1925)
  • Ian Colquhoun - Drummossie Moor (2008)
  • Diana Gabaldon - Dragonfly in Amber (1992)
  • G. A. Henty - Bonnie Prince Charlie: A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden (1888)
  • Naomi Mitchison - The Bull Calves (1947)