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The year 1739 in literature involved some significant events and new books.

Events

• War between the United Kingdom and Spain begins.
• Celebrity hanging of Dick Turpin.
• Handel's Saul performed.
• John Wesley and George Whitefield both give their first open-air sermons.
• Henry Brooke's drama Gustavus Vasa is the first play banned under the Licensing Act of 1737.

New books

• Corporate authorship - The Scots Magazine (periodical)
• Penelope Aubin - A Collection of Entertaining Histories and Novels
• Henry Baker and James Miller - The Works of Moliere, French and English (transl.)
• Moses Browne - Poems
• Elizabeth Carter - Examination of Mr. Pope's Essay on Man (transl.)
  • - Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophy Explain'd for the Use of Ladies (transl.)
• Mary Collier - The Woman's Labour (an answer to Stephen Duck from the "milkmaid poet")
• Philip Doddridge - The Family Expositor
• Henry Fielding as "Captain Hercules Vinegar" - The Champion (periodical)
• Richard Glover - London
• David Hume - A Treatise of Human Nature
• William Law - The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration
• Mikhail Lomonosov - Ode on the Taking of Khotin from the Turks
• John Mottley as "Elijah Jenkins" - Joe Miller's Jests; or, the Wits Vade-Mecum
• Robert Craggs Nugent - An Epistle to Sir Robert Walpole (attrib.)
  • - An Ode on Mr. Pulteney
  • - An Ode, to His Royal Highness on His Birthday
  • - Odes and Epistles
• John Oldmixon - The History of England During the Reigns of Henry VIII. Edward VI. Queen Mary. Queen Elizabeth
• Laetitia Pilkington - The Statues
• Samuel Richardson - Aesop's Fables
• Elizabeth Rowe - Miscellaneous Works
• Thomas Sheridan - The Satires of Juvenal Translated
• Jonathan Swift - Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift
• Joseph Trapp - The Nature, Folly, Sin, and Danger, of Being Righteous Over-much (against George Whitefield)
• Voltaire - De la gloire, ou entretien avec un Chinois
  • - Conseils a M. Helvetius
• Isaac Watts - The World to Come
• John Wesley - Hymns and Sacred Poems
• George Whitefield - A Continuation of the Reverend Mr. Whitefield's Journal
• Paul Whitehead - Manners

Newly published drama

• Daniel Bellamy - Miscellanies in Prose and Verse
• Henry Carey - Nancy (opera)
• Thomas Cooke - The Mournful Nuptials (not acted)
• David Mallet - Mustapha
• James Miller - An Hospital for Fools
• Edward Phillips - Britons, Strike Home
• William Shirley - The Parricide
• James Thomson - Edward and Eleonara

Births

• November 20 - Jean-François de la Harpe, French critic (died 1803)
• date unknown
  • Johann Augustus Eberhard, theologian and philosopher (died 1809)
  • Hugh Kelly, dramatist and poet (died 1777)

Deaths

• June 20 - Edmond Martène, historian (born 1654)
• July 25 - Johann Christoph Wolf, Hebrew scholar and bibliographer (born 1683)
• October 18 - António José da Silva, dramatist (born 1705)
• date unknown
  • George Lillo, dramatist