November 21 – The first instalment of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, also known as Fanny Hill, is published anonymously by John Cleland to raise money to free himself from the London debtors' prison. It is considered by some to be the first modern erotic novel.
Leonhard Euler publishes, in Berlin, one of the two works for which he will be most renowned: the Introductio in analysin infinitorum. Euler's fifth paper on nautical topics, E137, is also written in this year but not published until 1750.