1733 in literature

	1724; 1725; 1726; 1727; 1728; 1729; ; 1730; 1731; 1732; 1733; 1734; 1735; 1736; ; 1737; 1738; 1739; 1740; 1741; 1742;
	In poetry 1730 1731 1732 1733 1734 1735 1736
	Art; Archaeology; Architecture; Literature; Music; Philosophy;

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1733.

Events

February 20 – The first epistle of Alexander Pope's poem An Essay on Man is published anonymously.^[1]
March 29 – The second epistle of Pope's An Essay on Man is published.^[1]
May – Voltaire begins his long-term relationship with Emilie de Breteuil, marquise du Chatelet.
May 8 – The third epistle of Pope's An Essay on Man is published.^[1]
Autumn – Laurence Sterne enters Jesus College, Cambridge.^[2]
October – Charles Macklin makes his debut at Drury Lane Theatre in The Recruiting Officer.^[3]

George Berkeley – The Theory of Vision
James Bramston – The Man of Taste (answer to Pope from 1732)
John Durant Breval (as Joseph Gay) – Morality in Vice (part of Curll's continuing war with John Gay)
Peter Browne – Things Supernatural and Divine Conceived by Analogy with things Natural and Human
George Cheyne – The English Malady
Thomas-Simon Gueullette – Les Mille et une Heures, contes péruviens (Peruvian Tales: Related in One Thousand and One Hours, by One of the Select Virgins of Cusco)
John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey – An Epistle from a Nobleman to a Doctor of Divinity
George Lyttelton, 1st Baron Lyttelton – Advice to a Lady
Samuel Madden – Memoirs of the Twentieth Century (roman à clef about George II)
David Mallet – Of Verbal Criticism (to Pope)
Thomas Newcomb – The Woman of Taste (reaction to Pope's Epistle of 1732)
Alexander Pope
- "Of the Nature and State of Man, with Respect to" (3) "Society" (continuation of Essay on Man; the first two "epistles" published in 1732, the fourth in 1744)
- Of the Use of Riches: An Epistle to Lord Bathurst (also as Epistle to Bathurst)
- The Impertinent
Elizabeth Singer Rowe – Letters Moral and Entertaining
Jonathan Swift
- On Poetry, a Rhapsody (contains explicit attacks on George II and many of the "dunces", resulting in arrests and prosecution.)
- The Life and Genuine Character of Doctor Swift
Voltaire – Letters Concerning the English Nation
Isaac Watts – Philosophical Essays

William Bond – The Tuscan Treaty
John Durant Breval – The Rape of Helen (printed 1737)
Charles Coffey – The Boarding School (performed and published)
Henry Fielding – The Miser (from Molière)
John Gay (died 1732) – Achilles (opera)
Eliza Haywood – The Opera of Operas (adaptation of Fielding's Tom Thumb, with a pro-Walpole "reconciliation" scene) (opera)
William Havard – Scanderbeg
John Kelly – Timon in Love
Edward Phillips
- The Livery Rake
- The Mock Lawyer
- The Stage Mutineers
António José da Silva – Vida do Grande Dom Quixote de la Mancha e do Gordo Sancho Pança
Lewis Theobald (ed.) – The Works of Shakespeare
Lewis Theobald – The Fatal Secret

Anonymous – Verses Address'd to the Imitator of the First Satire of the Second Book of Horace (attrib. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, to Pope)
John Banks – Poems on Several Occasions
Samuel Bowden – Poetical Essays
Mary Chandler – A Description of Bath
Thomas Fitzgerald – Poems
Matthew Green (as Peter Drake) – The Grotto
James Hammond – An Elegy to a Young Lady
Alexander Pope –The First Satire of the Second Book of Horace
See also 1733 in poetry

January 12 – Antoine-Marin Lemierre, French poet and dramatist (died 1793)
March 13 – Joseph Priestley, English natural philosopher and theologian (died 1804)
March 18 – Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, German critic and bookseller (died 1811)
August 22 – Jean-François Ducis, French dramatist (died 1816)
September 5 – Christoph Martin Wieland, German poet (died 1813)
Unknown date – Robert Lloyd, English poet and satirist (died 1764)^[4]

January 21 – Bernard de Mandeville, Dutch-born satirist and philosopher writing in English (born 1670)
March 12 – Michel Le Quien, French theologian and historian (born 1661)
March 13 – Mademoiselle Aïssé, Circassian-born French letter-writer (born c. 1694)
May 10 – Jacob August Franckenstein, German lexicographer (born 1689)
June 23 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss scholar (born 1672)
August 16 – Matthew Tindal, English deist writer (born 1657)
Unknown date – John Dunton, English writer and bookseller (born 1659)^[5]

^ ^a ^b ^c James McLaverty (2001). Pope, Print, and Meaning. Oxford University Press. p. 108. ISBN 978-0-19-818497-3.
^ Ian Campbell Ross (2001). Laurence Sterne: A Life. Oxford University Press. p. 36. ISBN 978-0-19-212235-3.
^ Philip H. Highfill; Kalman A. Burnim; Edward A. Langhans (1984). A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800. SIU Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-8093-1130-9.
^ This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Cousin, John William (1910). A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature. London: J. M. Dent & Sons – via Wikisource.
^ Berry, Helen M. (2004). "Dunton, John (1659–1732)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online ed., Jan 2008, accessed 7 Sept 2008