This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1741.

• January 15 – The revival in the London theatre of Shakespeare plays featuring actresses in travesti roles continues at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane with Hannah Pritchard as Viola in Twelfth Night, a play not performed for more than 70 years. Kitty Clive plays Olivia. Mrs Pritchard's Rosalind (As You Like It) remains in the repertory.^[1]
• January 29 – A life-size memorial to William Shakespeare (d. 1616), designed by William Kent and sculpted by Peter Scheemakers, is erected in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.^[2]
• February 13 – Andrew Bradford launches the American colonies' first periodical in Philadelphia, the American Magazine.^[3]
• February 14 – Irish-born actor Charles Macklin makes his London stage debut as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, pioneering a psychologically realistic style with Shakespeare's text revived, replacing George Granville's melodramatic adaptation The Jew of Venice.^[4][5] Kitty Clive plays the travesti role of Portia with Mrs Pritchard as Nerissa.^[1]
• March 14 – K. K. Theater an der Burg (Imperial Court Theatre) in Vienna opens.
• October 19 – David Garrick makes his London stage debut in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III. His performance quickly packs theaters.^[6] His professional debut was earlier in the year at Ipswich, in Thomas Southerne's adaptation of Oroonoko.
• unknown date
  • The first translation of a Shakespeare play into German, Julius Caesar, is made by C. W. von Bork, using alexandrines.^[7]
  • Printer Robert Foulis sets up as a publisher in Edinburgh.^[8]

• Anonymous
  • The Life of Pamela (parody of Richardson's Pamela)^[9]
  • Pamela Censured
• Charles Balguy (anonymous translator) – The Decameron
• Comte de Caylus – Les Féeries nouvelles^[10]
• Stephen Duck – Every Man in his Own Way
• Henry Fielding (as Mr. Conny Keyber) – An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
• Eliza Haywood – The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected
• Ludvig Holberg – Niels Klim's Underground Travels
• John Kelly – Pamela's Conduct in High Life (continuation of Pamela)
• Alexander Pope with John Gay and John Arbuthnot – Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus
• Charles Povey – The Virgin in Eden (prose fiction)
• Samuel Richardson
  • Letters Written to and for Particular Friends (also known as Familiar Letters)
  • Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded vols. iii – iv
• Hristofor Zhefarovich – Stemmatographia

• Anonymous – Pamela; or, Virtue Triumphant
• Robert Dodsley – The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (adapted from anonymous Elizabethan play)
• David Garrick – The Lying Valet
• William Hatchett – The Chinese Orphan: An Historical Tragedy (adapted from the 13th-century Chinese play The Orphan of Zhao; unperformed)
• John Kelly – The Levee
• Pierre-Claude Nivelle de La Chaussée – Mélanide
• Voltaire – Mahomet (first performed)

• Geoffrey Chaucer – The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer (new edition revives interest)
• William Shenstone – The Judgment of Hercules
• Edward Young – Poetical Works of the Reverend Edward Young
• Alonso Verdugo, third Earl of Torrepalma – Adonis
• John and Charles Wesley – A Collection of Psalms and Hymns

• Thomas Betterton – The History of the English Stage, from the Restoration to the Present
• Thomas Francklin – Of the Nature of the Gods
• David Hume – Essays Moral and Political
• Real Academia Española – Ortografía
• Luigi Riccoboni – An Historical and Critical Account of the Theatres of Europe
• Martín Sarmiento – Memorias para la historia de la poesía y poetas españoles
• Emanuel Swedenborg – A Hieroglyphic Key to Natural and Spiritual Arcana by Way of Representation and Correspondences (written, published in 1784).
• Jonathan Swift
  • Dean Swift's Literary Correspondence (pirate edition by Edmund Curll, for which sued by Pope)
  • Some Free Thoughts on the Present State of Affairs
• Isaac Watts – The Improvement of the Mind
• Leonard Welsted – The Summum Bonum
• George Whitefield – A Letter to the Reverend John Wesley

• January 6 – Sarah Trimmer, English writer for children (died 1810)
• January 16 – Hester Thrale (Mrs Piozzi), English diarist and arts patron (died 1821)
• August 25 – Karl Friedrich Bahrdt, German theologian and adventurer (died 1792)
• October 4 – Edmond Malone, Irish Shakespearean editor (died 1812)
• October 18 – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French novelist (died 1803)
• October 28 – Johann August von Starck, German theologian and political writer (died 1816)

• January 9 – William Gwavas, English lawyer and writer in the Cornish language (born 1676)
• February 21 – Jethro Tull, English agricultural innovator and writer (born 1674)
• March 17 – Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French dramatist and poet (born 1671)
• April 10 – Celia Fiennes, English travel writer (born 1662)
• July 30 – Thomas Emlyn, English Unitarian writer (born 1663)
• December 14 – Charles Rollin, French historian (born 1661)
• December 21 – Bernard de Montfaucon, French scholar and palaeographer (born 1655)^[11]
• unknown date – Anne Dick, Scottish comic poet and lampoonist (year of birth unknown)^[12]