1642 in literature

This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1642.

Events

May – 35-year-old John Milton marries the teenage Mary Powell. A few weeks later she leaves him in London and returns to her family in Oxfordshire.^[1]
May–June – English Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace is incarcerated in the Gatehouse Prison, Westminster for defying Parliament, during which time he perhaps writes "To Althea, from Prison".^[2]
September 2 – The theatres in London are closed by the Puritan government; the "lascivious mirth and levity" of stage plays are to "cease and be forborn" for the next eighteen years, during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. Reportedly Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew is staged on the final day, and so is the last play performed during the era of English Renaissance theatre.
John Denham's Cooper's Hill is the first example in English of a poem devoted to local description, in this case the Thames scenery around the author's home at Egham in Surrey.

Thomas Browne – Religio Medici
Thomas Fuller – The Holy State and the Profane State
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft – Nederduytsche Historiën (History of the Netherlands, publication begins)
Sir Walter Ralegh – The Prince, or Maxims of State
Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – La garduña de Sevilla y anzuelo de las bolsas

March 15 (baptised) – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician and writer (died 1711)
April 21 – Simon de la Loubère, French diplomat, writer, mathematician and poet (died 1729)
April 30 – Christian Weise, German dramatist and poet (died 1708)
December 30 – Vincenzo da Filicaja, Florentine poet (died 1707)
Unknown dates
- Ihara Saikaku (井原西鶴), Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozōshi (floating world) genre of prose (died 1693)
- James Tyrrell, English political philosopher (died 1718)
Probable year of birth
- Thomas Shadwell, English dramatist (died 1698)
- Edward Taylor, English-born colonial American poet and author (died 1729)

May 14 – Nicolas Ysambert, French theologian (born c. 1565)
June 1 – Sir John Suckling, English poet (born 1609)
July 5 – Festus Hommius, Dutch Calvinist theologian (born 1576)
Unknown dates
- Abdul-Haqq Dehlavi, Indian Islamic scholar and writer (born 1551)
- Sir Francis Kynaston, English poet (born 1587)
- James Mabbe, English scholar, poet and translator (born 1572)

↑ Campbell, Gordon (2004). "Milton, John (1608–1674)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/18800. Retrieved 2013-10-25. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
↑ Wood, Anthony. Athenæ Oxonienses.

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