1732 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1732.

Events

• Trinity College Library in Dublin, designed by Thomas Burgh, is completed.
• December 7 – The original Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, London (the modern-day Royal Opera House) is opened by John Rich with a production of William Congreve's The Way of the World.^[1]
• December 13 – The first issue of Then Swänska Argus, by Olof von Dalin, is published in Sweden, introducing the "younger new Swedish" (yngre nysvenska) literary language.
• December 28 – The first edition of Poor Richard's Almanac, by Benjamin Franklin, is published in America.

New books

Prose

• Anonymous
  • Castle-Howard
  • The Gentleman's Study in Answer to the Lady's Dressing Room (reply to Swift)
  • A Collection of Pieces in Verse and Prose . . . on Occasion of the Dunciad
• Corporate authorship – the London Magazine (periodical)
• George Berkeley – Alciphron
• Johann Jakob Bodmer – translation of John Milton's Paradise Lost into German prose
• Elizabeth Boyd – The Happy-Unfortunate
• Mary Davys – The False Friend (fiction)
• Philip Doddridge – Sermons on the Religious Education of Children
• Robert Dodsley – A Muse in Livery
• George Granville, Lord Lansdowne – The Genuine Works
• John Horsley – Britannia Romana, or The Roman Antiquities of Britain
• William King – The Toast
• George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton – The Progress of Love
• Daniel Neal – The History of the Puritans or Protestant Non-Conformists
• Richard Savage – An Epistle to the Right Honourable Sir Robert Walpole
• Jonathan Swift
  • The Lady's Dressing Room
  • The Grand Question Debated
  • (with Pope and others) Miscellanies: The Third Volume
• Isaac Watts – A Short View of the Whole Scripture History
• Leonard Welsted – Of Dulness and Scandal (answer to The Dunciad)
• Gilbert West – Stowe
• Martín Sarmiento – Demostración apologética

Drama

• Henry Carey
  • Amelia (opera)
  • The Disappointment
  • Terminta
• Henry Fielding
  • The Lottery
  • The Modern Husband
  • The Covent-Garden Tragedy
  • The Old Debauchees
  • The Mock Doctor (performed)
• John Gay (with Alexander Pope) – Acis and Galatea (opera by Handel)
• John Kelly – The Married Philosopher

Poetry

• John Milton – Milton's Paradise Lost, edited by Richard Bentley

Births

• January 6 – Matija Antun Relković, Croatian grammarian and poet (died 1798)
• January 24 – Pierre de Beaumarchais, French writer (died 1799)
• February 19 – Richard Cumberland, English dramatist (died 1811)
• April – George Colman the Elder, English dramatist and essayist (died 1794)
• September 29 – Samuel Musgrave, English classical scholar and pamphleteer (died 1780)

Deaths

• February 22 – Bishop Francis Atterbury, English politician and writer (born 1663)
• March 20 – Johann Ernst Hanxleden, German poet and lexicographer (born 1681)
• March 29 (buried) – Jane Barker, English dramatist and poet (born 1652)
• May 9 – Samuel Palmer, English printer (year of birth unknown)
• July 3 (buried) – Mary Davys, Irish poet and dramatist (born 1674)
• December 2 – Constantia Grierson, Irish poet and classical scholar (born c. 1705)
• December 4 – John Gay, English poet and dramatist (born 1685)

References