1747 in literature

Events

• March 31 – Laurence Sterne preaches the Good Friday sermon at St Helen Stonegate; The Case of Elijah and the Widow of Zerephath is later printed and published.
• April – David Garrick becomes one of the managers of the Drury Lane Theatre in London.
• June 21 – Licensing Act transfers responsibility for pre-production censorship of plays in Britain from the Master of the Revels to the Lord Chamberlain and restricts serious drama to the patent theatres.
• December 1 – Samuel Richardson's two-volume epistolary novel Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady begins publication in London from his own print shop.
• unknown date – The Załuski Library in Warsaw is opened to the public.

  New books

Prose

• William Blackstone – The Pantheon
• Thomas Carte – A General History of England
• Juan de Iriarte – Discurso sobre la imperfección de los diccionarios
• Diego de Torres Villarroel – Desengaños razonables para sacudir el polvo del espanto
• Denis Diderot – La Promenade du sceptique
• William Dunkin – Boetia
• Thomas Edward – A Supplement to Mr. Warburton's Edition of Shakespear
• Henry Fielding, as "John Trott Plaid" – The Jacobite's Journal
• Sarah Fielding – Familiar Letters Between the Principal Characters in David Simple
• Samuel Foote – The Roman and English Comedy Consider'd
• Hannah Glasse – The Art of Cookery
• Madame de Graffigny – Letters from a Peruvian Woman
• Henry Home, Lord Kames – Essays Upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities
• Samuel Johnson – The Plan of a Dictionary of the English Language
• Charlotte Lennox – Poems
• David Mallet – Amyntor and Theodora
• William Mason – Musaeus: A monody to the memory of Pope
• William Memoth, the younger – The Letters of Pliny the Consul
• Josiah Ralph – A Miscellany
• Samuel Richardson – Clarissa vol. i–ii
• William Shakespeare – The Works of Shakespear
• Tobias Smollett – Reproof
• Joseph Spence – Polymetis
• Voltaire – Zadig
• Horace Walpole – A Letter to the Whigs
• Joseph Warton – Ranelagh House
• Thomas Warton – The Pleasures of Melancholy

  Drama

• John Cunningham – Love in a Mist
• Samuel Foote – The Diversions of the Morning or, A Dish of Chocolate
• David Garrick – Miss in Her Teens
• Christian Fürchtegott Gellert – Die zärtlichen Schwestern
• Carlo Goldoni – The Venetian Twins
• Benjamin Hoadly – The Suspicious Husband
• John Home – Agis
• Edward Moore – The Foundling
• Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku and Namiki Senryū I – Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura

  Poetry

• Philip Francis – A Poetical Translation of the Works of Horace
• Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – Six Town Eclogues

  Births

• January 11 – François Alexandre Frédéric, duc de la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, French economics writer
• January 12 – Susanna Blamire, English dialect poet and songwriter
• January 15 – John Aikin, English biographer, activist and physician
• January – William Seward, English man of letters
• September 30 – John Mastin, English memoirist, local historian and cleric
• December 12 – Anna Seward, English poet
• Unknown date
• John Edwards, Welsh poet
• Thomas Scott, English cleric and religious writer

  Deaths

• January 16 – Barthold Heinrich Brockes German poet
• August – Leonard Welsted, English poet
• November 17 – Alain-René Le Sage, French novelist and playwright
• November 22 – Joseph Trapp, poet, controversialist and translator