• June 12 – Émilie de Breteuil marries Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet.^[1]
• December – The library of Charles Killigrew, who was the Master of the Revels for 48 years, is sold a few months after his death.
• In China, 66 copies of a 5,020-volume encyclopedia, the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China are printed, which requires the crafting of 250,000 movable-type characters cast in bronze.

Prose edit

• Joseph Addison – Miscellanies
• The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage (first printed edition)
• Mary Davys – The Works of Mrs. Davys
• Daniel Defoe – The Complete English Tradesman
• George Bubb Dodington – An Epistle to Sir Robert Walpole
• John Dyer – A New Miscellany
• Laurence Echard – The History of the Revelation
• Benjamin Franklin – A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain
• Johann Joseph Fux – Gradus ad Parnassum (Steps to Mount Parnassus, in Latin)
• Zachary Grey – A Defence of Our Antient and Modern Historians (against John Oldmixon)
• Eliza Haywood
  • Bath-Intrigues
  • Fantomina
  • Memoirs of a Certain Island Adjacent to the Kingdom of Utopia
  • Secret Histories, Novels and Poems
• Francis Hutcheson – An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (on aesthetics)
• John Oldmixon – A Review of Dr. Zachary Grey's Defence
• Richardson Pack – A New Collection of Miscellanies
• Christopher Pitt – Vida's Art of Poetry (translation of Marco Girolamo Vida)
• Richard Savage – The Authors of the Town
• William Shakespeare – The Works of Shakespear (edited by Pope)
• Jonathan Swift – Fraud Detected; or, The Hibernian Patriot
• Giambattista Vico – New Science
• Isaac Watts – Logick
• George Whitehead – The Christian Progress of George Whitehead
• Edward Young – The Universal Passion: Satire
• Benito Jerónimo Feijoo – Aprobación apologetica del scepticismo médico del doctor Martín Martínez
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – Correo del otro mundo al gran Piscator de Salamanca

Drama edit

• Colley Cibber – Caesar in Aegypt
• Augustin Nadal – Mariamne
• Gabriel Odingsells –
  • The Bath Unmasked
  • The Capricious Lovers
• Thomas Sheridan – The Philoctetes of Sophocles

Poetry edit

• Henry Baker – Original Poems
• Henry Carey – Namby Pamby (satire on Ambrose Philips)
• Thomas Cooke – The Battle of the Poets (satire on Alexander Pope)
• John Glanvill – Poems
• Alexander Pope – The Odyssey of Homer vols. i–iii
• Allan Ramsay – The Gentle Shepherd

• February 5 – Anna Maria Rückerschöld, Swedish author (died 1805)^[2]
• February 12 – William Mason, English poet and gardener (died 1797)
• March 22 – Ignacy Nagurczewski, Polish writer and translator (died 1811)
• April 2 – Giacomo Casanova, Italian autobiographer and adventurer (died 1798)
• July 24 – John Newton, English hymnist, naval officer and cleric (died 1807)
• December 5 – Susanna Duncombe, English poet and artist (died 1812)^[3]

• January 6 – Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松 門左衛門), Japanese dramatist (born 1653)^[4]
• January 26 – Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, Georgian prince and writer (born 1658)
• February 8 – John Bellers, English writer and Quaker (born 1654)
• March 2 – Johan Peringskiöld, Swedish antiquary and translator (born 1689)
• April 25 – Paul de Rapin, French historian (born 1661)
• June 29 – Arai Hakuseki, Japanese scholar-bureaucrat and writer (born 1657)
• September 5 – Christian Wernicke, German epigrammist (born 1661)
• December 7 – Florent Carton Dancourt, French dramatist and actor (born 1661)
• Unknown date – Richard Fiddes, English historian and cleric (born 1671)^[5]