1704 in literature

The year 1704 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• Battle of Blenheim
• The capture of Gibraltar during the War of the Spanish Succession by British and Dutch troops, allies of Archduke Charles, the Austrian pretender to the Spanish Crown.
• Architect and dramatist, Sir John Vanbrugh, is commissioned to begin Blenheim Palace.

New books

• Joseph Addison - The Campaign
• Edmund Arwaker - An Embassy from Heav'n (re Queen Mary)
• Mary Astell - A Fair Way with Dissenters and their Patrons (reply to Defoe)
• William Chillingworth - The Works of William Chillingworth
• Mary Davys - The Amours of Alcyippus and Leucippe
• Daniel Defoe - The Address
  • - The Dissenters Answer to the High-Church Challenge
  • - An Elegy on the Author of the True-Born English-man
  • - An Essay on the Regulation of the Press (attrib.)
  • - Giving Alms No Charity, and Employing the Poor a Grievance to the Nation
  • - A Hymn to Victory
  • - The Storm: or, a collection of the most remarkable casualties and disasters which happen'd in the late dreadful tempest, both by sea and land (re Great Storm of 1703)
  • - More Short-Ways with the Dissenters
  • - A Review of the Affairs of France
• John Dennis - The Person of Quality's Answer to Mr Collier's Letter
• Andrew Fletcher - An Account of a Conversation Concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Good of Mankind
• Pierre Jurieu - Histoire critique des dogmes et des cultes
• White Kennett - The Christian Scholar (attrib.)
• Sarah Kemble Knight - The Journals of Madam Knight
• Charles Leslie - The Wolf Stript of his Shepherd's Clothing (contra Defoe's "Shortest Way")
• Bernard de Mandeville - Typhon
• Isaac Newton - Opticks
• Mary Pix - Violenta
• Matthew Prior - A Letter to Monsieur Boileau Depreaux
• Jonathan Swift - A Tale of a Tub (first 3 editions)
  • - The Battle of the Books
• William Wycherley - Miscellany Poems

New drama

• Thomas Baker - An Act at Oxford
• Colley Cibber - The Careless Husband
• John Dennis -Liberty Asserted
• George Farquhar - The Stage-Coach
• Nicholas Rowe -The Biter
• Richard Steele - The Lying Lover
• William Tavener - The Faithful Bride of Granada
• Joseph Trapp - Abra-Mule

Births

• January 1 - Soame Jenyns, poet and essayist (died 1787)
• February 12 - Charles Pinot Duclos (died 1722)
• June 22 - John Taylor, classical scholar (died 1766)
• date unknown - John Adams, poet

Deaths

• April 12 - Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, French writer (born 1627)
• June 18 - Tom Brown (satirist) (born 1662)
• October 28 - John Locke, philosopher (born 1632)
• December 11 - Roger L'Estrange, Royalist pamphleteer (born 1616)
• date unknown
  • Henry Herringman, bookseller and publisher
  • Jane Leade, visionary and Christian mystic writer (born 1624)