Henry Dundas ( 1742 – 1811 ) dominated political affairs in the latter part of the century.

* May 28 – Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, British minister ( b. 1742 )

The leader of the Whigs was Robert Walpole, who maintained control of the government in the period 1721 – 1742 ; his protégé was Henry Pelham ( 1743 – 54 ).

Henry Fielding proved his mastery of the form in Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ), The Life of Jonathan Wild the Great ( 1743 ) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ( 1749 ), but, as Fielding himself wrote, these novels were written in imitation of the manner of Cervantes, author of Don Quixote, not in imitation of the picaresque novel ; Cervantes himself wrote a short picaresque novel, Rinconete y Cortadillo part of his Novelas Ejemplares ( Exemplary Novels ).

Other major 18th century English novelists are Samuel Richardson ( 1689-1761 ), author of the epistolary novels Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded ( 1740 ) and Clarissa ( 1747-8 ); Henry Fielding ( 1707 – 54 ), who wrote Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ) and The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling ( 1749 ); Laurence Sterne ( 1713 – 68 ) who published Tristram Shandy in parts between 1759 and 1767 ; Oliver Goldsmith (? 1730-74 ) author of The Vicar of Wakefield ( 1766 ); Tobias Smollett ( 1721 – 71 ) a Scottish novelist best known for his comic picaresque novels, such as The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle ( 1751 ) and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker ( 1771 ), who influenced Charles Dickens ; and Fanny Burney ( 1752-1840 ), whose novels " were enjoyed and admired by Jane Austen ," wrote Evelina ( 1778 ), Cecilia ( 1782 ) and Camilla ( 1796 ).

In a pamphlet of " Remarks " ( 1742 ), he replied to John Tillard, and Remarks on Several Occasional Reflections ( 1744 – 1745 ) was an answer to Akenside, Conyers Middleton ( who had been his friend ), Richard Pococke, Nicholas Mann, Richard Grey, Henry Stebbing and other of his critics.

Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville PC and Baron Dunira ( 28 April 1742 – 28 May 1811 ) was a Scottish lawyer and politician.

* George Henry Lee, 2nd Earl of Lichfield ( 1690 – 1742 )

The Opies and Bottigheimer both note that Henry Fielding alluded to Jack in Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ); Dr. Johnson admitted to reading the tale ; Boswell read the tale in his boyhood ; and William Cowper was another who mentioned the tale.

Until 1742 this meant the government of Walpole, but afterward it was the government of Henry Pelham to which he lent his support.

Born in Dalkeith: the American Architecht Robert Smith ( 1722 ), the politician Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville ( 1742 ), the artist John Kay ( 1742 ), Robert Aitken who published the first Bible in North America, David Mushet, who pioneered iron production, photographer Robert Macpherson ( 1814 ), and the mathematical physicist Peter Guthrie Tait ( 1831 ).

He translated into French several works by Alexander Pope, Henry Bolingbroke, William Warburton's The Alliance between Church and State, ( 1736 ) as Dissertations sur l ’ Union de la Religion, de la Morale, et de la Politique ( 1742 ) and Baltasar Gracián's El político.

* William Henry Drayton ( 1742 – 1779 ), U. S. lawyer, South Carolina delegate to Continental Congress

Einbeck is the birthplace of Henry Mühlenberg, who emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1742 and became the patriarch of the Muhlenberg family dynasty as well as the founder of the Lutheran church in the American colonies.

* Sir Henry St John, 4th Baronet ( 1652 – 1742 ) ( created Viscount St John in 1716 )

* Henry St John, 1st Viscount St John ( 1652 – 1742 )

* Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville ( 1742 – 1811 )

* Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville ( 1742 – 1811 ), nicknamed " Henry IX " for his personal power in Scotland

Other notable painters were Richard Crosse ( 1742 – 1810 ), Ozias Humphry ( 1742 – 1810 ), Samuel Shelley ( c1750 – 1808 ), whose best pictures are groups of two or more persons, William Wood, a Suffolk artist ( 1768 – 1808 ), Henry Edridge ( 1769 – 1821 ), John Bogle, and Edward Dayes.

William Henry Drayton ( September 1742 – September 3, 1779 ) was an American planter and lawyer from Charleston, South Carolina.

* William Henry Drayton, ( 1742 – 1779 ), US lawyer, South Carolina delegate to Continental Congress

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.

Fielding continued to bait Richardson with Joseph Andrews ( 1742 ), the tale of Shamela's brother, Joseph, who goes through his life trying to protect his own virginity, thus reversing the sexual predation of Richardson and satirizing the idea of sleeping one's way to rank.

Shamela had appeared anonymously, but Fielding published Joseph Andrews under his own name, also in 1742.

Another novel by Fielding parodying Pamela, albeit not so explicitly, is The History of the Adventures of Joseph Andrews and his Friend, Mr. Abraham Adams ( February 1742 ), more commonly known as Joseph Andrews.

He became more interested in music theory and completed a treatise on the subject, Neues musicalisches System ( 1742 / 3, published 1752 ).

Zhongguo Guanhua ( 中國官話 ), or Medii Regni Communis Loquela (" Middle Kingdom's Common Speech "), used on the frontispiece of an early Chinese grammar published by Étienne Fourmont ( with Arcadio Huang ) in 1742

" Shortly afterwards, the celebrated Edmond Hoyle published his Short Treatise ( 1742 ).

An early critic of social contract theory was Rousseau's friend, the philosopher David Hume, who in 1742 published an essay " Of Civil Liberty ", in whose second part, entitled, " Of the Original Contract ", he stressed that the concept of a " social contract " was a convenient fiction:

Zedler also published new works such as the trade lexicon Allgemeine Schatz-Kammer Der Kaufmannschafft ( 1741 – 1743, 4 volumes and 1 supplement volume ), stock exchange laws Corpus Juris Cambialis ( Johann Gottlieb Siegels, 1742, 2 volumes ) and the Historical-Political-Geographical Atlas of the whole world ( 1744 – 1749, 13 volumes ), published under the name of the Leipzig bookseller, Johann Samuel Heinsius the Elder.

It is speculated that Bayes was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1742 on the strength of the Introduction to the Doctrine of Fluxions, as he is not known to have published any other mathematical works during his lifetime.

In 1742 he visited the Royston Cave at Royston, Hertfordshire and a year later he published his Palaeographia Britannica or discourses on Antiquities in Britain no. I, Origines Roystonianae, or an account of the Oratory of lady Roisia, Foundress of Royston discovered in Royston in August 1742.

A work, De Graecis Illustribus, which he left in manuscript, was published in 1742 by Samuel Jebb, who prefixed to it a Latin life of the author.

The Jesuits requested him to write in defence of the orthodox system of grace against the doctrine of the Jansenists, which resulted in his Istoria teologica delle doctrine e delle opinione corse ne cinque primo secoli della chiesa in proposito della divina grazia, del libero arbitrio e della predestinazione, published at Trent, 1742.

A Roman Monument at Igel in the Dutchy of Luxemburgh, coloured engraving published by John Boydell, London ( 1783 ) from a painting by Edward Rooker ( 1712 ?- 1774 ) after William Pars ( 1742 – 1782 )

The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality, was published in 1742, and was followed by other " Nights ," the eighth and ninth appearing in 1745.

An annotated copy of Newton's Principia was published in 1742 by Fathers le Seur and Jacquier of the Franciscan Minims, two Catholic mathematicians, with a preface stating that the author's work assumed heliocentrism and could not be explained without the theory.

Among his other writings are, Memoirs of North Britain ( 1715 ), Essay on Criticism ( 1728 ) and Memoirs of the Press 1710-1740 ( 1742 ), which was only published after his death.

Thomas Birch published part of it in 1742.

Colin Maclaurin's two-volume Treatise of Fluxions published in 1742 also began as a response to Berkeley attacks, intended to show that Newton's calculus was rigorous by reducing it to the methods of Greek geometry.

The Athenaid, an epic in thirty books, was published in 1787, and his diary, entitled Memoirs of a distinguished literary and political Character from 1742 to 1757, appeared in 1813.

Hoan-ji died in 1716 and it was not until 1737 that Fourmont published Meditationes Sinicae and in 1742 Grammatica Sinica.

The other great work of Bengel, and that on which his reputation as an exegete is mainly based, is his Gnomon Novi Testamenti, or Exegetical Annotations on the New Testament, published in 1742.

Among the lives of Sydenham are one ( anonymous ) by Samuel Johnson in John Swan's translation of his works ( London, 1742 ), another by CG Kuhn in his edition of his works ( Leipzig, 1827 ), and a third by Robert Gordon Latham in his translation of his works published in London by the Sydenham Society in 1848.

Shenstone tried hard to suppress it but in 1742 he published anonymously a revised draft of The Schoolmistress, a Poem in imitation of Spenser.