1715 in literature

Events

• c. August – Nicholas Rowe becomes the Poet Laureate of Great Britain.
• The first record of the actress and writer Eliza Haywood tells of her performing in Thomas Shadwell's Shakespeare adaptation, Timon of Athens; or, The Man-Hater at the Smock Alley Theatre, Dublin.

  New books

Prose

• Joseph Addison – The Free-Holder
• Jane Barker – Exilius; or, The Banished Roman
• Richard Bentley – A Sermon upon Popery
• Samuel Croxall – The Vision
• Daniel Defoe
• *An Appeal to Honour and Justice
• *The Family Instructor
• *A Hymn to the Mob
• Elizabeth Elstob – The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue, first given in English; with an apology for the study of northern antiquities, the first grammar of Old English
• Thomas-Simon Gueullette – Les Mille et un quarts-d’heure, contes tartares
• Alain-René Lesage – L'Histoire de Gil Blas de Santillane
• Charles Montagu – The Works and Life of the Late Earl of Halifax
• Jonathan Richardson – An Essay on the Theory of Painting
• "Captain" Alexander Smith – The Secret History of the Lives of the Most Celebrated Beauties, Ladies of Quality, and Jilts
• Richard Steele
• *The Englishman: Second Series
• *Town-Talk

  Children

• Isaac Watts – Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children

  Drama

• Henry Carey – The Contrivances
• Susanna Centlivre – The Gotham Election
• Chikamatsu Monzaemon – The Battles of Coxinga
• Charles Rivière Dufresny – La Coquette de village
• John Gay, Alexander Pope, and John Arbuthnot – What d'ye call it?
• Benjamin Griffin
• *Injured Virtue; or, The Virgin Martyr
• *Love in a Sack
• Charles Molloy – The Perplex'd Couple
• Nicholas Rowe -The Tragedy of Lady Jane Grey
• Lewis Theobald – The Perfidious Brother
• John Vanbrugh – The Country House''

  Poetry

• Charles Cotton – The Genuine Works of Charles Cotton
• Alexander Pope
• *The Temple of Fame
• *The Iliad of Homer vol. i.
• Thomas Tickell – The First Book of Homer's Iliad
• Isaac Watts
• *Divine Songs
• *A Guide to Prayer

  Births

• January 14 – Frances Vane, Viscountess Vane, English memoirist
• January 26 or February 26 – Claude Adrien Helvétius, French philosophical writer
• June 4 – Cao Xueqin, Chinese writer
• September 30 – Étienne Bonnot de Condillac, French philosophical writer
• October 1 – Richard Jago, English poet
• Probable year of birth
• *John Hawkesworth, English writer and editor
• *Alexander Russell, Scottish physician and naturalist

  Deaths

• January 7 – François Fénelon, French archbishop, theologian, poet and writer
• February 25 – Pu Songling, Qing Dynasty Chinese writer
• March 8 – William Dampier, English explorer and writer
• March 17 – Gilbert Burnet, Scottish theologian and historian
• July 30 – Nahum Tate, Irish poet and hymnist
• October 13 – Nicolas Malebranche, French priest and rationalist philosopher
• Unknown date – Mary Monck, Irish poet