1746 in literature

• May 9 – Voltaire, on being admitted into the Académie française, gives a discours de réception in which he criticizes Boileau's poetry.In Britain, Voltaire's speech is quoted in The Gentleman's Magazine in July and the full text is translated into English in Dodsley's Museum for December 20. {{Cite book |last=Clark |first=Alexander Frederick Bruce |year=1971 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9385ZgRwSy4C |title=Boileau and the French Classical Critics in England (1660–1830) |pages=40, 43 |publisher=Franklin, Burt |isbn=978-0-8337-4046-5 |accessdate=2010-02-13}}
• June 18 – Samuel Johnson signs a contract to compile A Dictionary of the English Language for a group of London booksellers led by Robert Dodsley at a literary breakfast.{{Cite book |author=John Hawkins |title=The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9k0JAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA345 |year=1787 |publisher=J. Buckland |pages=345}}
• August 28 – A Native American massacre on this day of two white families in Deerfield, Massachusetts, gives rise to the first known poem by an African American, Lucy Terry, at the time a slave of around 16: "Bars Fight, August 28, 1746".The ballad, related orally for a century, is first printed in Josiah Gilbert Holland's History of Western Massachusetts in 1855. {{Cite book |authorlink=Daniel Burt (author) |last=Burt |first=Daniel S. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VQ0fgo5v6e0C |title=The Chronology of American Literature: America's literary achievements from the colonial era to modern times |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |year=2004 |isbn=978-0-618-16821-7}}
• October 4 – Irish actor Spranger Barry makes his London stage debut in the title role of Othello at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane (with Charles Macklin as Iago).
• unknown dates
• The probable first performance of Carlo Goldoni's comedy Servant of Two Masters ({{langx|it|Il servitore di due padroni}}) takes place at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice.
• The oldest manuscript of Jean de Joinville's Life of Saint Louis is rediscovered in Brussels.
• Élie Catherine Fréron founds his controversial journal Lettres de la comtesse de...

• John Arbuthnot (died 1735) – Miscellanies
• John Collier as "Tim Bobbin" – A View of the Lancashire Dialect by way of dialogue between Tummus... and Meary...
• Zachary Grey – A Word or Two of Advice to William Warburton
• James Hervey – Meditations Among the Tombs
• Soame Jenyns – The Modern Fine Gentleman
• Jacques Rochette de La Morlière – Angola{{cite journal |last1=Kavanagh |first1=Thomas M. |title=Coupling the Novel: Reading Bodies in La Morlière's Angola |journal=Eighteenth-Century Fiction |date=2001 |volume=13 |issue=2–3 |pages=389–414 |doi=10.1353/ecf.2001.0018|s2cid=162335040 }}
• Pierre Louis Maupertuis – Astronomie nautique, volume 2
• Tobias Smollett – Advice
• Lauritz de Thurah – Den Danske Vitruvius, volume I
• John Upton – Critical Observations on Shakespeare
• Horace Walpole – The Beauties
• John Wesley
• The Principles of a Methodist Father Explain'd
• Sermons on Several Occasions

• Charles Macklin – Henry VII
• Pierre de Marivaux – Le Préjugé vaincu
• Takeda Izumo I, Takeda Izumo II, Namiki Sōsuke and Miyoshi ShōrakuShōriya, Aragorō. "[http://www.kabuki21.com/sdtk.php Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami]." Kabuki21.com. Accessed 4 December 2008. – Sugawara Denju Tenarai Kagami

• Thomas Blacklock – Poems
• William Collins – Odes
• Thomas Cooke – A Hymn to Liberty
• Christian Fürchtegott Gellert – Fabeln und Erzählungen (Fables and Stories) (in verse)
• Joseph Warton – Odes on Various Subjects
• See also 1746 in poetry

• January 12 – Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, Swiss educational reformer (died 1827)
• January 25 – Stéphanie Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, French writer, harpist, educator (died 1830)
• March 27 – Michael Bruce, Scottish poet (died 1767)
• April 3 – Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville, French fantasy novelist (died 1805)
• May 3 – Radu Golescu, Wallachian statesman and literary sponsor (died 1818)
• December 21 – José de la Cruz (Huseng Sisiw), Filipino writer (died 1829)
• unknown date – Victor d'Hupay, French philosopher (died 1818)

• February 4 – Robert Blair, Scottish member of the "Graveyard poets" (born 1699)
• February 8 – Anton Josef Kirchweger, Latin Pietist author (year of birth unknown){{cite book|first=Willy|last=Schrödter|title=Abenteuer mit Gedanken: Mächte und Gewalten in uns|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Zx1a_cz0SWYC&pg=PA18|year=2003|publisher=Reichl Verlag|isbn=978-3-87667-249-6|pages=18|language=de}}
• May 16 – Moshe Chaim Luzzatto, Italian Jewish rabbi, kabbalist and philosopher (born 1707)
• May 22 – Thomas Southerne, Irish dramatist (born 1660)
• November 12 – Mary Leapor, English kitchenmaid poet (born 1722; died of measles)
• December 6 – Lady Grizel Baillie, Scottish poet (born 1665)
• unknown date – Frederic Count de Thoms, German biographer of King Louis XIV of France and art collector (born 1669){{cite book|last=Halbertsma|first=R. B.|year=2003|title=Scholars, Travellers, and Trade|publisher=Routledge|pages=11–14}}

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