1726 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1726. Events February – Lavinia Fenton makes her stage debut as Monimia in Thomas Otway's The Orphan at the Haymarket Theatre in London. April 5 – Publication takes place in London of Lewis Theobald's Shakespeare Restored, or A Specimen of the Many Errors As Well Committed as Unamended by Mr Pope in his Late Edition of this Poet; Designed Not only to correct the said Edition, but to restore the True Reading of Shakespeare in all the Editions ever yet published. May 10 – Voltaire leaves France for a three-year stay in Britain. May 25 – Britain's first circulating library is opened in Edinburgh by the poet and bookseller Allan Ramsay. July – Françoise-Louise de Warens converts to Catholicism to receive a church pension, and annuls her marriage. October 28 – Jonathan Swift's satirical novel Gulliver's Travels is published in London, anonymously in two volumes, as Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. It sells out in a week. unknown dates The Teatro Valle opens in Rome. The Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China (古今圖書集成), an immense Chinese encyclopedia, is printed using copper-based movable type printing. New books Fiction Penelope Aubin – The Life and Adventures of the Lady Lucy (novel) Jane Barker – The Lining of the Patch-Work Screen (sequel to 1723's A Patch-Work Screen) William Rufus Chetwood – The Voyages and Adventures of Captain Robert Boyle (fiction, sometimes attributed to Daniel Defoe) Eliza Haywood The City Jilt The Mercenary Lover Jonathan Swift Gulliver's Travels Cadenus and Vanessa