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The year 1721 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Contents 1 Events 2 New books 3 New drama 4 Births 5 Deaths

[edit] Events

• Around this time ("first" is debated), inoculation for smallpox began in England.
• John Cleland becomes a pupil at Westminster School and is soon expelled for an unknown offense.
• Francis Atterbury is arrested for plotting against the Hanoverian monarchy and being a "Jacobite".
• The South Sea Bubble burst, with many losses of fortune, including John Gay, and there are increasing suspicions of complicity by Robert Walpole's government.

[edit] New books

• Joseph Addison - The Works of Joseph Addison
• Penelope Aubin - The Strange Adventures of the Count de Vinevil and His Family
  • - The Life of Madam de Beaumont
• Nathan Bailey - A Universal Etymological Dictionary
• George Berkeley - An Essay Towards Preventing the Ruine of Great Britain
• Richard Blackmore - A New Version of the Psalms of David
• Shaftesbury - Letters from the Late Earl of Shaftesbury, to Robert Molesworth
• Charles Gildon - The Laws of Poetry
• Eliza Haywood - Letters from a Lady of Quality to a Chevalier (transl.)
• Montesquieu - Lettres persanes (Persian Letters)
• Alexander Pennecuik - An Ancient Prophecy Concerning Stock-Jobbing, and the Conduct of the Directors of the South-Sea-Company
• Matthew Prior - Colin's Mistakes
• John Strype - Ecclesiastical Memorials
• Emanuel Swedenborg - Prodromus principiorum rerum naturalium
• Jonathan Swift - The Bubble
  • - A Letter to a Young Gentlleman, Lately Enter'd into Holy Orders
• Thomas Tickell - Kensington Garden
• Robert Wodrow - The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland

[edit] New drama

• Colley Cibber - The Refusal
• Eliza Haywood - The Fair Captive
• John Mottley - Antiochus
• Thomas Odell - The Chimera
• Edward Young - The Revenge

[edit] Births

• March 19 - Tobias Smollett, Scottish physician and author (died 1771)
• November 9 - Mark Akenside, poet (died 1770)
• December 27 - François Hemsterhuis, moral philosopher (died 1790)
• date unknown
  • William Collins, poet (died 1759)
  • Johann Silberschlag, theologian (died 1791)

[edit] Deaths

• January 3 - Juan Núñez de la Peña, historian (born 1641)
• August 13 - Jacques Lelong, French bibliographer (born 1665)
• September 18 - Matthew Prior, British poet and diplomat (born 1664)
• December 12 - Alexander Selkirk, the model for Robinson Crusoe (born 1676)
• date unknown
  • Charlwood Lawton, Jacobite author
  • Antoine Watteau, French painter