Robert Walpole is at the height power as First Lord of the Treasury (or, as some term him in a slightly derogatory manner, the "prime minister") during1736 and 1737, and Walpole is under incessant attack by the Tory satirists and the radical Whig theorists alike.

John Gay's Beggar's Opera (1728) had linked Walpole with the notorious mobster Jonathan Wild, and Walpole had used his influence to have the sequel Polly banned before performance by the Lord Chamberlain (the Duke of Grafton).

Henry Fielding's Tom Thumb (1730), Covent Garden Tragedy (1732), and Pasquin (1736) had taken more specific aim at Walpole.

Further, political plays with the theme of "liberty" are often coded attacks on domination by great men.

The great man in question is often Walpole as the king.

Henry Carey's Chrononhotonthologos (1734) had seemingly attacked Robert Walpole and linked him with an intrigue with the Queen, and his The Dragon of Wantley had revived a seventeenth century ballad to protest the extension of Walpole's powers and oppression of the countryside.

Walpole has a personally antagonistic relationship with some of the dramatists (such as the late John Gay), and he responds to literary attacks with official power.

Few British ministers will be as adversarial with wits and authors, and his censoring of plays critical of him leads to ever-more aggressive satires.

Thus, the urbane satire of The Beggar's Opera had been replaced by the much more mocking satire of Tom Thumb, the salaciousness of Chrononhotonthologos, and the bitterness of The Dragon of Wantley.

The Theatrical Licensing Act of June 21, 1737 (10 Geo. II c. 28) is a landmark act of censorship of the British stage and one of the determining factors in the development of Augustan drama.

The terms of the Act are that from this point forward, the Lord Chamberlain has the power to approve any play before it is staged.

Although many plays and playwrights (including Henry Fielding) have been suggested as the cause of the act, debates on the Act mention the play A Vision of the Golden Rump, a raucous attack on the current Parliament whose author is unknown.

In the year of the Act, Henry Fielding's Pasquin had again attacked Walpole, although its attack was, by that time, a continuation of complaints.

However, A Vision of the Golden Rump was a continuation of this war of words and an upping of the stakes, and Walpole's Whig Party response had been to cite that play and its scatology as a rationale for shutting down all plays that might be possibly read as critical of the crown or Parliament.

The Act closes all non-patent theaters and requires all plays to be passed before performance.

The "legitimate drama" becomes limited to the theaters at Drury Lane, Covent Garden, and the Haymarket.

The Foundling Hospital in London, founded in 1741 by the philanthropic sea captain Thomas Coram, is a children's home established for the "education and maintenance of exposed and deserted young children."

The word "hospital" is used in a more general sense than it is today, simply indicating the institution's "hospitality" to those less fortunate.

Several novels are written in response to Samuel Richardson's popular novel Pamela (November 1740), satirizing the innocence of the character of Pamela Andrews.

An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or simply Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical novel written by Henry Fielding and first published in April 1741 under the name of Mr. Conny Keyber.

Fielding never owned to writing the work, but it is widely considered to be his own direct attack on his contemporary and rival Richardson and is composed, like Pamela, in epistolary form.

Eliza Haywood’s The Anti-Pamela; or Feign’d Innocence Detected, much like the more popular Shamela, portrays the female protagonist as a social climber, although Haywood's character is much less licentious than Fielding's Shamela.

David Garrick on October 19 makes his first appearance as Shakespeare's Richard III.

His performance quickly packs theaters.

Hogarth’s The Enraged Musician, a 1741 etching and engraving, depicts a comic scene of a violinist driven to distraction by the cacophony outside his window.

It is issued as companion piece to the third state of his print of The Distrest Poet.

Edward Young’s The Complaint, or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality: Night the First, is published anonymously in 1742.

The poem, written in blank verse, describes the poet's musings on death over a series of nine "nights" (published between 1742 and 1745) in which he ponders the loss of his wife and friends, and laments human frailties.

The best-known line in the poem is the adage "procrastination is the thief of time", which is part of a passage in which the poet discusses how quickly life and opportunities can slip away.

Joseph Andrews, or The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and of his Friend Mr. Abraham Adams, is Henry Fielding’s first published full-length novel, and indeed among the first novels in the English language.

Published in 1742 and defined by Fielding as a ‘comic epic poem in prose’, it is the story of a good-natured footman's adventures on the road home from London with his friend and mentor, the absent-minded parson Abraham Adams.

The novel draws on a variety of inspirations.

Written "in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote", the work owes much of its humor to the techniques developed by Cervantes, and its subject-matter to the seemingly loose arrangement of events, digressions and lower-class characters to the genre of writing known as picaresque.

In deference to the literary tastes and recurring tropes of the period, it relies on bawdy humor, an impending marriage and a mystery surrounding unknown parentage, but conversely is rich in philosophical digressions, classical erudition and social purpose.

Charles Jervas's English translation of Don Quixote is published posthumously.

Through a printer's error, the translator's name is printed as Charles Jarvis, leading the book to forever be known as the Jarvis translation.

It is acclaimed as the most faithful English rendering of the novel made up to this time.

George Frideric Handel's oratorio, Samson, premieres in London on February 21.

It is a great success, leading to a total of seven performances in its first season, the most in a single season of any of his oratorios.

Samson will retain its popularity throughout Handel's lifetime and has never fallen entirely out of favor since.

Considered one of his finest dramatic works, it is usually performed as an oratorio in concert form, but on occasions has also been staged as an opera.

The well-known arias "Let the bright Seraphim" (for soprano) and "Total eclipse" (for tenor) are often performed separately in concert.

The effects of the Licensing Act upon British theater are profound.

The public mistrusts plays that pass the censors.

One effect is that the plays that are passed are more domestically oriented, more sentimental, and, aside from Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Oliver Goldsmith, who both will write old-style plays, authors of melodrama will enjoy greatest success.

Arguably, the Licensing Act had created an immediate vacuum of new plays to perform, and this leaves theaters with little option but to stage revivals.

The number of productions of Shakespeare plays staged in the 1740s will be far higher than previously (one fourth of all plays performed in the decade).

Additionally, the Licensing Act has diverted politically interested authors away from the stage and into writing novels.

Fielding and Brooke are only two of the authors who turn their energies to novel writing.

Many other novelists, such as Tobias Smollett and Laurence Sterne, never approach the stage.

Prior to the Licensing Act, theater had been the first choice for most wits.

After it, the novel is.

The Act is not solely responsible for the transformation of the British stage in the eighteenth century away from satire and toward lofty and "sentimental" subject matter, but it is responsible for stopping one of the theatrical movements away from sentiment and domestic tragedy.

Henry Fielding's comic novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling is published in London.

Often known simply as Tom Jones, the novel—among the earliest English prose works describable as such—is both a Bildungsroman and a picaresque novel.

Totaling 346,747 words, it is divided into eighteen smaller books, each preceded by a discursive chapter, often on topics unrelated to the book itself. It is dedicated to George Lyttleton.

Though lengthy, the novel is highly organized.

Although critic Samuel Johnson takes exception to Fielding's "robust distinctions between right and wrong", it becomes a best seller, with four editions being published in its first year alone.

Also this year, Fielding becomes magistrate at Bow Street, and first enlists the help of the Bow Street Runners, an early police force (eight men at first).

Tom Jones is generally regarded as Fielding's greatest book, and as a very influential English novel.

Elizabeth Canning is an English maidservant who claimed to have been kidnapped and held against her will in a hayloft for almost a month.

She ultimately becomes central to one of the most famous English criminal mysteries of the eighteenth century.

She disappears on January 1, 1753, before returning almost a month later to her mother's home in Aldermanbury in the City of London, emaciated and in a "deplorable condition".

After being questioned by concerned friends and neighbors she is interviewed by the local alderman, who then issues an arrest warrant for Susannah Wells, the woman who occupies the house in which Canning is supposed to have been held.

At Wells' house in Enfield Wash, Canning identifies Mary Squires as another of her captors, prompting the arrest and detention of both Wells and Squires.

London magistrate Henry Fielding becomes involved in the case, taking Canning's side.

Further arrests are made and several witness statements were taken, and Wells and Squires are ultimately tried and found guilty—Squires of the more serious and potentially capital charge of theft.

However, Crisp Gascoyne, trial judge and Lord Mayor of London, is unhappy with the verdict and begins his own investigation.

He speaks with witnesses whose testimony implies that Squires and her family could not have abducted Canning, and he interviews several of the prosecution's witnesses, some of whom recant their earlier testimony.

He orders Canning's arrest, following which she is tried and found guilty of perjury.

Squires is pardoned, and Canning sentenced to one month's imprisonment and seven years of transportation.

Canning's case pits two groups of believers against one another: the pro-Canning "Canningites", and the pro-Squires "Egyptians".

Gascoyne is openly abused and attacked in the street, while interested authors wage a fierce war of words over the fate of the young, often implacable maid.

She will die in Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1773, but the mystery surrounding her disappearance will remain unsolved.