The year 1711 in literature involved some significant events.

[edit] Events

• The Spectator founded by Joseph Addison and Richard Steele.
• After defeat at the Battle of Stănileşti, Dimitrie Cantemir flees to Russia and begins writing his most important works.
• William Whiston loses his professorship at Cambridge for contesting the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.
• Charles Gildon becomes editor of The British Mercury.
• Robert Wilks, Colley Cibber and Anne Oldfield form a partnership to manage the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.
• Robert Harley, author, statesman, and friend to the "tory wits," who had been involved in Anne's ministry for some time, was created Earl of Oxford.

[edit] New books

• Francis Atterbury - Representation of the State of Religion
• Richard Blackmore - The Nature of Man
• Pierre Boileau - The Works of Monsieur Boileau, vol. 1 (published by John Ozell)
• Abel Boyer - The Political State of Great Britain
• Jean Chardin - Voyages de monsieur le chevalier Chardin en Perse et autres lieux de l'orient (The Travels of Sir John Chardin in Persia and the Orient)
• Giuseppe Colombani - Unnamed treatise on the use of the spadone
• Shaftesbury - Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (aka "Shaftesbury's Characteristics")
• Daniel Defoe - The British Visions
  • - An Essay on the History of Parties
  • - An Essay on the South-Sea Trade
  • - The Present State of the Parties in Great Britain (attrib.)
  • - The Secret History of the October Club
• John Dennis - Reflections Critical and Satyrical, Upon a Late Rhapsody call'd, An Essay upon Criticism (Dennis's counterattack on Alexander Pope)
• John Gay - The Present State of Wit (satirical answer to Defoe)
• William King - The History of the Heathen Gods
• George Mackenzie - Several Proposals Conducting to a Further Union of Britain
• Alexander Pope - An Essay on Criticism
• Richard Steele, Joseph Addison, Eustace Budgell, et al. - The Spectator
• John Strype - The Life and Acts of Matthew Parker
• Jonathan Swift - Miscellanies in Prose and Verse
  • - The Conduct of the Allies (contra Marlborough and the War of the Spanish Succession)
• Thormodus Torfæus - Historia Rerum Norvegicarum
• Ned Ward - The Life and Notable Adventures of that Renown'd Knight Don Quixote de la Mancha (in verse)
• William Whiston - Primitive Christianity Revived, vol. 1

[edit] New drama

• Richard Steele - The Man of Mode

[edit] Births

• May 7 - David Hume, philosopher (died 1776)
• May 18 - Roger Joseph Boscovich, poet and polymath (died 1787)
• October 17 - Jupiter Hammon, poet (died about 1806
• November 19 - Mikhail Lomonosov, Russian writer and polymath (died 1765)
• date unknown
  • Johann Heinrich Samuel Formey, philosopher
  • William Smith, classical scholar
  • William Tytler, historian
  • Kitty Clive
  • Alban Butler, hagiographer

[edit] Deaths

• January 5 - Mary Rowlandson, author of A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson (born 1635)
• March 13 - Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (born 1636)
• March 19 - Bishop Thomas Ken, theologian and hymn-writer (born 1637)
• June 7 - Henry Dodwell, theologian (born 1641)
• November 3 - John Ernest Grabe, theologian (born 1666)
• date unknown
  • Richard Bulstrode, memoirist (born 1610)
  • Richard Duke, poet (born 1658)
  • John Norris, philosopher and poet (born 1657)