1742 in literature

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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1742.

Events

February – Henry Fielding's picaresque novel Joseph Andrews appears in London as The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. Described by Fielding as a "comic epic poem in prose", it is his first full-length novel and among the earliest in the English language. A second edition appears on June 10.^[1]
December 2 – The Pennsylvania Journal first appears in the United States.
December – The novelist and dramatist Pierre de Marivaux is elected to the Académie française.^[2]
unknown dates
- The Irish portraitist Charles Jervas' English translation of Don Quixote is published three years after his death. Through a printer's error, the translator's name is printed as "Charles Jarvis", leading to the book being known forever as the "Jarvis" translation. It is acclaimed as the most faithful English rendering of the novel up to this time.^[3]
- The Stockholm Gazette, founded by Peter Momma, begins publication.^[4]
- The publisher Robert Foulis acquires his own printing press in Glasgow.
- The French typefounder Pierre Simon Fournier's Modèles des Caractères presents his system of point sizes for typography.^[5]

Colley Cibber – A Letter from Mr. Cibber to Mr. Pope (in re Pope's satirizing of Cibber)
Ignacio de Luzán – Carta en defensa de España
Philip Doddridge – Evidences of Christianity
Pierre Simon Fournier – Modèles des Caractères
Nathaniel Hooke – An Account of the Conduct of the Dowager Duchess of Marlborough from her first coming to Court to the year 1710
Edmond Hoyle – A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist^[6]
David Hume – Essays Moral and Political vol. ii
Benito Jerónimo Feijoo – Cartas eruditas y curiosas
Colin Maclaurin – Treatise on Fluxions
John Oldmixon – Memoirs of the Press, Historical and Political
Horace Walpole and Sir Charles Hanbury Williams – The Lessons for the Day (satire on William Pulteney, Bolingbroke and the "Patriot Whigs").
William Warburton – A Critical and Philosophical Commentary on Mr. Pope's Essay on Man
John Wesley
- The Character of a Methodist
- The Principles of a Methodist
George Whitefield – Nine Sermons

January 1 – Isaac Reed, English Shakespearean editor (died 1807)
March 25 – William Combe, English writer, poet and adventurer (died 1823)
June 25 – Johann Schweighäuser, German classical scholar (died 1830)
September 14 – James Wilson, American pamphleteer and publisher (died 1798)
October 6 – Johan Herman Wessel, Norwegian author (died 1785)
unknown dates
- Ralph Broome, English pamphleteer (died 1805)
- Mihály Bakos (Miháo Bakoš), Slovene hymnist and Lutheran minister in Hungary (died 1803)

^ Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews and Shamela, ed. Thomas Keymer. Oxford: World's Classics, Oxford University Press, 2008 ISBN 9780199536986.
^ Ian Davidson (9 December 2010). Voltaire: A Life. Profile Books. p. 226. ISBN 1-84765-224-7.
^ Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (2003). The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote. University of Georgia Press. p. 35. ISBN 978-0-8203-2430-2.
^ Allen Kent; Harold Lancour; William Z. Nasri; Jay Elwood Daily (1968). Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science. M. Dekker. p. 462. ISBN 978-0-8247-2023-0.
^ Elliott, R. C. (1933). "The development if the 'point' unit of type measurement". Monotype Recorder. 30 (241). London: The Monotype Corporation. OCLC 11494675.
^ Bodle, Andy (22 November 2008). "Guide to games: Leaders of the pack: A short history of cards". The Guardian. Retrieved 24 April 2019.