This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1738.

Events

• April 11 – Robert Blair marries Isabella Law.
• July 10 – Richard Dawes is appointed Master of the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle.^[1]
• August – Laurence Sterne is ordained a priest, and in the autumn becomes vicar of Sutton-on-the-Forest, Yorkshire.
• August 8 – Jonathan Swift writes to Alexander Pope describing the deterioration in his mental condition; Swift will eventually be given into the care of a legal guardian.^[2]
• September 18 – Samuel Johnson composes his first solemn prayer (published 1785).

New books

Prose

• James Anderson – The Constitutions of the Free-Masons, 2nd ed.
• Jean-Baptiste de Boyer, Marquis d'Argens – Jewish Letters (published anonymously)^[3]
• John Banks – Miscellaneous Works in Verse and Prose
• Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten – De ordine in audiendis philosophicis per triennium academicum quaedam praefatus acroases proximae aestati destinatas indicit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
• Louis de Beaufort – Dissertation sur l'incertitude des cinq prèmiers siècles de l'histoire romaine
• Robert Dodsley – The Art of Preaching
• Marie Huber – Lettres sur la religion essentielle à l'homme (Letters Concerning the Religion Essential to Man)
• David Hume (anonymously) – A Treatise of Human Nature (dated 1739)
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Sur la figure de la terre
• Margareta Momma – Samtal emellan Argi Skugga och en obekant Fruentimbers Skugga (Conversation between the Shadow of Argus and the Unfamiliar Shadow of a Female)^[4]
• Francis Moore – Travels into the Inland Parts of Africa
• Abbé Prévost – Memoirs of a Man of Quality (anonymous English translation)
• Thomas Shaw – Travels in Barbary and the Levant
• Jonathan Swift
  • The Beasts Confession to the Priest
  • A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation
• William Warburton
  • The Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated
  • A Vindication of the author of the Divine Legation of Moses
• George Whitefield – A Journal of a Voyage from London to Savannah in Georgia
• Diego de Torres Villarroel
  • Anatomía de todo lo visible e invisible
  • Vida ejemplar de la venerable madre Gregoria Francisca de Santa Teresa

Drama

• Robert Dodsley – Sir John Cockle at Court
• Carlo Goldoni
  • Momolo Cortesan
  • L'uomo di mondo
• Sir Hildebrand Jacob
  • The Happy Constancy
  • The Prodigal Reformed
  • The Trial of Conjugal Love
• George Lillo – Marina (adapted from Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre)
• Charles Marsh – Amasis, King of Egypt
• James Miller –
  • Art and Nature
  • The Coffee House
• Alexis Piron – La Metromanie
• António José da Silva – Precipicio de Faetonte
• James Thomson – Agamemnon

Poetry

• Mark Akenside (anonymously) – A British Philippic
• Elizabeth Carter (anonymously) – Poems Upon Particular Occasions
• John Gay – Fables: Volume the Second
• Eugenio Gerardo Lobo – Obras poéticas líricas
• Samuel Johnson – London, A Poem, on the Third Satire of Juvenal
• Alexander Pope
  • The Sixth Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
  • The First Epistle of the First Book of Horace Imitated
  • (with Jonathan Swift) An Imitation of the Sixth Satire of the Second Book of Horace
  • One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight
  • The Universal Prayer
  • One Thousand Seven Hundred and Thirty Eight: Dialogue II
• James Thomson – The Works of Mr Thomson
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – Juguetes de Talia, entretenimiento del numen
• John Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns (first English edition)

Births

• February 9 (baptized) – Mary Whateley, English poet and playwright (died 1825)
• May 9 – John Wolcot, English satirist and poet (died 1819)
• May 12 – Jonathan Boucher, English philologist (died 1804)
• May 27 – Moritz August von Thümmel, German humorist and satirical author (died 1817)
• June 21 – Gottlieb Christoph Harless, German bibliographer (died 1815)
• July 24 – Betje Wolff, Dutch novelist (died 1804)
• November 15 – Joseph Johnson, English publisher (died 1809)
• December 4 – Karl Friedrich Kretschmann, German poet, playwright and storyteller (died 1809)^[5]
• unknown date – Manuel Lassala, Spanish dramatist and philosopher (died 1806)

Deaths

• January 6 – Jean-Baptiste Labat, French polymath (born 1663)^[6]
• March – Margrethe Lasson, Danish novelist (born 1659)
• April 25 – Giacomo Laderchi, Italian ecclesiastical historian (born c. 1678)
• June 5 – Isaac de Beausobre, French Protestant theologian (born 1659)
• July 8 – Jean-Pierre Nicéron, French lexicographer (born 1685)
• September 3 or 4 – George Lillo, English playwright (born 1691)^[7]
• September 23 – Herman Boerhaave, Dutch humanist writer (born 1668)
• November 10 – John Asgill, English pamphleteer (born 1659)