1726 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1726.

Events

February â Lavinia Fenton makes her stage debut as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan at the Haymarket Theatre in London.
April 5 â Publication takes place in London of Lewis Theobald's Shakespeare Restored, or A Specimen of the Many Errors As Well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his Late Edition of this Poet; Designed Not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet published.^[1]
May 10 â Voltaire leaves France for a three-year stay in Britain.^[2]
May 25 â Britain's first circulating library is opened in Edinburgh by the poet and bookseller Allan Ramsay.^[3]^[4]
July â FranÃ§oise-Louise de Warens converts to Catholicism to receive a church pension, and annuls her marriage.^[5]
October 28 â Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels is published in London, anonymously in two volumes, as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. It sells out in a week.^[2]
unknown dates
- The Teatro Valle opens in Rome.
- In China, 64 copies of a 5,020-volume encyclopedia, the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China (å¤ä»åæ¸éæ), are printed, requiring the crafting of 250,000 movable type characters cast in bronze. The text was drafted by Chen Menglei in 1700â05 and prepared for publication by around 1725.^[6]

Penelope Aubin â The Life and Adventures of the Lady Lucy (novel)
Jane Barker â The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen (sequel to 1723's A Patch-Work Screen)
William Rufus Chetwood â The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle (fiction, sometimes attributed to Daniel Defoe)
Eliza Haywood
- The City Jilt
- The Mercenary Lover
Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver's Travels
- Cadenus and Vanessa

John Balguy â A letter to a Deist concerning the Beauty and Excellency of Moral Virtue, and the Support and Improvement which it receives from the Christian Religion
Joseph Butler â Fifteen Sermons
Anthony Collins â The Scheme of Literal Prophecy
Corporate authorship â The Craftsman (periodical associated with Henry St. John)
Daniel Defoe
- The Political History of the Devil
- A System of Magick
John Dennis â The Stage Defended (reply to Law, below)
William Law
- The Absolute Unlawfulness of the Stage
- A Practical Treatise upon Christian Perfection
Samuel Penhallow â History of the Wars of New-England with the Eastern Indians
William Penn
- Fruits of a Father's Love
- A Collection of the Works of William Penn
- (with William Pulteney) â The Discovery
MartÃn Sarmiento â Reflexiones sobre el Diccionario de la lengua castellana que compuso la Real Academia en el aÃ±o de 1726
George Shelvocke â A Voyage Round the World by Way of the Great South Sea
Joseph Spence â An Essay on Popes' Odyssey
Lewis Theobald â Shakespeare Restored
Diego de Torres Villarroel â El ermitaÃ±o y Torres