This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1745.
- February – London theatres stage competing productions of Shakespeare's King John in response to the Jacobite rising begun this summer by Bonnie Prince Charlie. David Garrick's production of the original text at Drury Lane contrasts with Colley Cibber's adaptation Papal Tyranny in the Reign of King John at Covent Garden. The rivalry anticipates "the Romeo and Juliet war" of five years later.[1]
- September 21 – Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock delivers a speech on epic poetry – Abschiedsrede über die epische Poesie, kultur- und literargeschichtlich erläutert – to mark his leaving school.
- October 19 – Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist and Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, dies aged 78. His body is laid out in public for the people of Dublin to pay their last respects, and he is buried, in accordance with his wishes, in his cathedral by Esther Johnson's side, with his own epitaph: Ubi sæva Indignatio/Ulterius/Cor lacerare nequit ("Where savage indignation can no longer lacerate the heart").[2]
- November 17 – In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg of the Moravian Church asks innkeeper Samuel Powell to begin importing and distributing books, the origins of a bookstore still in existence in 2007.[3]
- ^ Michelle Lee (13 November 2000). Shakespearean Criticism. Cengage Gale. p. 287. ISBN 978-0-7876-4694-3.
- ^ McMinn, Joseph (2016). Jonathan Swift: A Literary Life. Springer. p. 155. ISBN 978-1-349-21253-8.
- ^ Duck, Michael (2007-03-04). "Book shop keeps age-old charm". The Morning Call. Lehigh Valley. Retrieved 2013-10-29.
- ^ Campbell, Thomas (1861). An Essay on English Poetry; with Notices of the British Poets (New ed.). John Murray. p. 262.
- ^ Thomas Whincop (1747). Scanderbeg: Or, Love and Liberty. A Tragedy. Written by the Late Thomas Whincop, Esq. To which are Added a List of All the Dramatic Authors, with Some Account of Their Lives. W. Reeve at Shakespear's Head, Serjeant's Inn-Gate, in Fleet-street. p. 201.
- ^ Al-Amili, Muhsin (1983). Aʻyān al-Shīʻah أعيان الشيعة [Notables of Shi'a] (in Arabic) (first ed.). Beirut, Lebanon: Dar al-Ta'afrof. p. 228.