1741 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1741.

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Events

• January 15 – The revival in the London theatre of Shakespeare plays featuring actresses in travesti roles continues at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Hannah Pritchard as Viola in Twelfth Night, a play not performed for more than 70 years. Kitty Clive plays Olivia. Mrs Pritchard's Rosalind (As You Like It) remains in the repertory.^[1]
• January 29 – A life-size memorial to William Shakespeare (d. 1616), designed by William Kent and sculpted by Peter Scheemakers, is erected in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.^[2]
• February 13 – Andrew Bradford launches the American colonies' first periodical in Philadelphia, the American Magazine.^[3]
• February 14 – Irish-born actor Charles Macklin makes his London stage debut as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, pioneering a psychologically realistic style with Shakespeare's text revived, replacing George Granville's melodramatic adaptation The Jew of Venice.^[4][5] Kitty Clive plays the travesti role of Portia with Mrs Pritchard as Nerissa.^[1]
• March 14 – K. K. Theater an der Burg (Imperial Court Theatre) in Vienna opens.
• October 19 – David Garrick makes his London stage debut in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III. His performance quickly packs theaters.^[6] His professional debut was earlier in the year at Ipswich, in Thomas Southerne's adaptation of Oroonoko.
• unknown date
  • The first translation of a Shakespeare play into German, Julius Caesar, is made by C. W. von Bork, using alexandrines.^[7]
  • Printer Robert Foulis sets up as a publisher in Edinburgh.^[8]

New books

Fiction

• Anonymous
  • The Life of Pamela (parody of Richardson's Pamela)^[9]
  • Pamela Censured
• Charles Balguy (anonymous translator) – The Decameron
• Comte de Caylus – Les Féeries nouvelles^[10]
• Stephen Duck – Every Man in his Own Way
• Henry Fielding (as Mr. Conny Keyber) – An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
• Eliza Haywood – The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected
• Ludvig Holberg – Niels Klim's Underground Travels
• John Kelly – Pamela's Conduct in High Life (continuation of Pamela)
• Alexander Pope with John Gay and John Arbuthnot – Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus
• Charles Povey – The Virgin in Eden (prose fiction)
• Samuel Richardson
  • Letters Written to and for Particular Friends (also known as Familiar Letters)
  • Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded vols. iii – iv
• Hristofor Zhefarovich – Stemmatographia

Drama

• Anonymous – Pamela; or, Virtue Triumphant
• Robert Dodsley – The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (adapted from anonymous Elizabethan play)
• David Garrick – The Lying Valet
• William Hatchett – The Chinese Orphan: An Historical Tragedy (adapted from the 13th-century Chinese play The Orphan of Zhao; unperformed)
• John Kelly – The Levee
• Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée – Mélanide
• Voltaire – Mahomet (first performed)

Poetry

Main article: 1741 in poetry

• Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (new edition revives interest)
• William Shenstone – The Judgment of Hercules
• Edward Young – Poetical Works of the Reverend Edward Young
• Alonso Verdugo, third Earl of Torrepalma – Adonis
• John and Charles Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns

Non-fiction

• Thomas Betterton – The History of the English Stage, from the Restoration to the Present
• Thomas Francklin – Of the Nature of the Gods
• David Hume – Essays Moral and Political
• Real Academia Española – Ortografía
• Luigi Riccoboni – An Historical and Critical Account of the Theatres of Europe
• Martín Sarmiento – Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles
• Emanuel Swedenborg – A Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Arcana by Way of Representation and Correspondences (written, published in 1784).
• Jonathan Swift
  • Dean Swift's Literary Correspondence (pirate edition by Edmund Curll, for which sued by Pope)
  • Some Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs
• Isaac Watts – The Improvement of the Mind
• Leonard Welsted – The Summum Bonum
• George Whitefield – A Letter to the Reverend John Wesley

Births

• January 6 – Sarah Trimmer, English writer for children (died 1810)
• January 16 – Hester Thrale (Mrs Piozzi), English diarist and arts patron (died 1821)
• August 25 – Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, German theologian and adventurer (died 1792)
• October 4 – Edmond Malone, Irish Shakespearean editor (died 1812)
• October 18 – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French novelist (died 1803)
• October 28 – Johann August von Starck, German theologian and political writer (died 1816)

Deaths

• January 9 – William Gwavas, English lawyer and writer in the Cornish language (born 1676)
• February 21 – Jethro Tull, English agricultural innovator and writer (born 1674)
• March 17 – Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French dramatist and poet (born 1671)
• April 10 – Celia Fiennes, English travel writer (born 1662)
• July 30 – Thomas Emlyn, English Unitarian writer (born 1663)
• December 14 – Charles Rollin, French historian (born 1661)
• December 21 – Bernard de Montfaucon, French scholar and palaeographer (born 1655)^[11]
• unknown date – Anne Dick, Scottish comic poet and lampoonist (year of birth unknown)^[12]

References

1. Ritchie, Fiona (2006). "Shakespeare and the Eighteenth-Century Actress". Borrowers and Lenders. 2 (2). Retrieved 2023-12-29.
2. "History". Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 2013-11-29.
3. "First Magazine Published in America". West Hempstead Public Library. Archived from the original on 2013-04-16. Retrieved 2012-07-22.
4. Brown, John Russell (1993). Shakespeare's Plays in Performance. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 63.
5. Simpson, Louis (1993-04-04). "There, They Could Say, Is the Jew". The New York Times. Retrieved 2013-09-04.
6. Horace Walpole remarked, "There was a dozen dukes a night at Goodman's Fields." Freedley, George; Reeves, John A. (1968). A History of the Theatre. New York, Crown. p. 290.
7. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare (2nd ed.). Oxford University Press. 2015. ISBN 978-0-19-870873-5.
8. Stephen W Brown (30 November 2011). Edinburgh History of the Book in Scotland, Volume 2: Enlightenment and Expansion 1707-1800. Edinburgh University Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-7486-5095-8.
9. Eliza Haywood; Henry Fielding (29 January 2004). Anti-Pamela and Shamela. Broadview Press. p. 304. ISBN 978-1-55111-383-8.
10. Nicholas Cronk; Kris Peeters (2004). Le comte de Caylus: les arts et les lettres : actes du colloque international Université d'Anvers (UFSIA) et Voltaire Foundation, Oxford, 26-27 mai 2000. Rodopi. p. 209. ISBN 90-420-1139-4.
11. John Lauris Blake (1842). A General Biographical Dictionary. James Kay, Jun. and Brother. p. 658.
12. James Grant (1884). Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh: Its History, Its People, and Its Places. Cassell. p. 114.