1709 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1709.

Events

• February 1 or 2 – Alexander Selkirk, the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, is rescued from the Juan Fernández Islands, where he was marooned, and begins his return to civilization.
• April 12 – The magazine The Tatler is founded in London by Richard Steele, writing as Isaac Bickerstaff. On July 8 "Mrs. (Phoebe) Crackenthorpe" (perhaps Delarivier Manley) begins publication of The Female Tatler.
• April 26 – An act of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland provides for public libraries in presbyteries.
• May–October 20 – Delarivier Manley's roman à clef The New Atalantis (Secret Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of Quality, of both Sexes, From The New Atalantis, an Island in the Mediterranean) is published in London (in two volumes, anonymously), purporting to be translated from Italian. Its satire of the Whigs is so scurrilous that the author is detained for questioning from October 29 to November 5. It goes through seven editions.
• May 2 – Alexander Pope's career as a poet is launched with the publication of the anthology Poetical Miscellanies, The Sixth Part, edited by John Dryden and published by Jacob Tonson in London.
• June 28 – Historian Gustaf Adlerfelt is killed at the Battle of Poltava; his eyewitness account is continued by his son.
• unknown dates
• The Works of Mr William Shakespear edited by dramatist Nicholas Rowe appears. It is the first modern edition of Shakespeare's plays, including scene divisions, dramatis personæ and a prefatory account of Shakespeare's life, the first substantial biography of him. An unauthorised seventh volume, including Shakespeare's poems, is perhaps edited by Charles Gildon.
• Ælfric of Eynsham's An English-Saxon Homily on the Birth-day of St. Gregory is translated from Old English by Elizabeth Elstob.

• Anthim the Iberian, Metropolitan of Ungro-Wallachia, sends his pupil Mihai Iștvanovici to establish the first printing press in the Kingdom of Kartli and in Georgia at large. Operating out of Tbilisi Iștvanovici produces the Gospel (Sahareba), designing his own fonts for Georgian scripts (the first ones, done by Miklós Tótfalusi Kis, had never reached Tbilisi); his letters are also used for his Romanian-language poem, written as a postface to the Gospel.

New books

Prose

• Abbé Olivier – Memoirs of the Life and Adventures of Signor Rozelli
• Mary Astell – Bart'lemy Fair
• Thomas Baker – Reflections on Learning, showing the Insufficiency thereof in its several particulars, in order to evince the usefulness and necessity of Revelation, vol. 1
• George Berkeley – An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision
• Richard Blackmore – Instructions to Vander Beck
• Samuel Cobb – The Female Reign
• Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury – ' (philosophy)
• Daniel Defoe – The History of the Union of Great Britain
• Charles Gildon – The Golden Spy (satire)
• White Kennett – A Vindication of the Church and Clergy of England
• William King – Miscellanies in Prose and Verse
• John Lawson – A New Voyage to Carolina
• Delarivier Manley – The New Atalantis
• John Strype – Annals of the Reformation and Establishment of Religion
• Jonathan Swift
• A Famous Prediction of Merlin
• A Project for the Advancement of Religion and the Reformation of Manners ("By a Person of Quality")
• A Vindication of Isaac Bickerstaff
• William Temple – Memoirs: Part III (ed. Jonathan Swift)
• John Trenchard – The Natural History of Superstition
• Giambattista Vico – De Nostri Temporis Studiorum Rationae (On the Study Methods of Our Times)