1730 in literature

Events

• January 7 – The death of the Icelandic scholar Árni Magnússon activates the bequest to the University of Copenhagen in Denmark of the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, which he has assembled.
• January 8 – The Grub Street Journal is launched in London, with Richard Russel and John Martyn as editors. It lasts for 418 issues.
• April 17 – Pietro Metastasio arrives in Vienna, where he settles permanently.
• September/October – Colley Cibber becomes Poet Laureate of the Kingdom of Great Britain, in succession to Laurence Eusden.
• December 11 – Voltaire's Brutus is finally staged.
• unknown date – Romeo and Juliet becomes the first of Shakespeare's plays to be performed in America, when it is staged in New York City.

  New books

Prose

• Joseph Addison – The Evidences of the Christian Religion
• John Bancks – The Weaver's Miscellany
• Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix – Histoire de l'Isle Espagnole ou de S. Domingue
• Thomas Cooke as "Scriblerus Tertius" – The Candidates for the Bays
• Yaakov Culi – Me'am Lo'ez
• Philip Doddridge – Free Thoughts on the Most Probable Means of Reviving the Dissenting Interest
• Johann Christoph Gottsched – Versuch einer kritischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen
• John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey – Observations on the Writings of the Craftsman
• George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton – An Epistle to Mr. Pope
• Pierre des Maizeaux – Vie de Bayle
• Isaac Rand – Index plantarum officinalium, quas ad materiae medicae scientiam promovendam, in horto Chelseiano
• Philip Johan von Strahlenberg – Das Nord- und Ostliche Theil von Europa und Asia
• Jonathan Swift – A Libel on D—— D——, and a Certain Great Lord
• Matthew Tindal – Christianity as Old as Creation
• William Whiston – Life of Samuel Clarke
• William Wotton – A Discourse Concerning the Confusion of Languages at Babel
• Edward Young – Two Epistles to Mr. Pope

  Drama

• Theophilus Cibber – Patie and Peggy
• Henry Fielding
• *The Author's Farce
• *Rape upon Rape
• *The Temple Beau
• *Tom Thumb
• George Lillo – Silvia
• Pierre de Marivaux – Le Jeu de l'Amour et du Hasard
• James Miller – The Humours of Oxford
• John Mottley – The Widow Bewitch'd
• Gabriel Odingsells – Bay's Opera
• James Ralph – The Fashionable Lady
• James Thomson – The Tragedy of Sophonisba

  Poetry

• Stephen Duck – Poems on Several Subjects
• Matthew Pilkington – Poems on Several Occasions
• Elizabeth Thomas – The Metamorphosis of the Town
• James Thomson – The Seasons
• See also 1730 in poetry

  Births

• March 27 – Thomas Tyrwhitt, English critic
• April 1 – Salomon Gessner, Swiss painter and poet
• August 20 – Paul Henri Mallet, Swiss historian
• November 10 – Oliver Goldsmith, Anglo-Irish poet and dramatist
• December 6 – Sophie von La Roche, German novelist
• unknown dates
• *Thomas Marryat, English medical writer and physician
• *Joakim Stulić, Croatian lexicographer
• *Tarikonda Venkamamba, Telugu poet
• probable year – Charlotte Lennox, Gibraltar-born Scottish novelist and poet

  Deaths

• January 7 – Árni Magnússon, Icelandic scholar
• February 9 – Johann Georg von Eckhart, German historian
• March 20 – Adrienne Lecouvreur, French actress
• July 16 – Elijah Fenton, English poet
• August 16 – Laurence Echard, English historian
• September 14 – Sophia Elisabet Brenner, Swedish poet and writer
• September 27 – Laurence Eusden, English Poet Laureate
• October 23 – Anne Oldfield, English actress
• November – Nedîm, Ottoman poet (born c. 1680; killed in the Patrona Halil uprising