1656 in poetry

Events

• This year in England, John Phillips, a nephew of John Milton, is summoned before the privy council for his share in a book of licentious poems, Sportive Wit, suppressed by the authorities but almost immediately replaced by a similar collection, Wit and Drollery.
• Hallgrímur Pétursson begins work on his Passion Hymns

Works published

• Margaret Cavendish, Lady Newcastle, Natures Pictures Drawn by Fancies Pencil to the Life, fiction, poetry and prose
• Abraham Cowley:
  • Miscellanies, including "On the Death of Mr. Crashaw"
  • Poems
  • Pindaric Odes
• Sir John Denham, translator, The Destruction of Troy, published anonymously, partial translation of Virgil's Aeneid, Book 2
• William Davenant, Wit and Drollery: Jovial Poems
• William Drummond, Poems
• John Evelyn, translator, An Essay on the First Book of T. Lucretius Carus, translation of the Latin of Lucretius' De rerum natura, with both English and Latin; including commendatory poems by Sir Richard Brown, Edmund Waller and Christopher Wase (in Latin);
• Richard Flecknoe, The Diarium, or Journall, anonymously published
• Mary Oxlie, authored a commendatory poem of fifty-two lines, To William Drummond of Hawthornden

Births

Death years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• Lady Mary Chudleigh (died 1710), English poet and essayist
• Henry Hall (died 1707), English poet and composer

Deaths

Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• Joseph Hall (born 1574), English bishop, satirist, moralist, and poet
• Johan van Heemskerk (born 1597), Dutch poet
• Johann Klaj (born 1616), German poet

Notes

References

1. Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, {{ISBN. 0-19-860634-6
2. [[Mark Van Doren]], ''John Dryden: A Study of His Poetry'', p 193, Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, second edition, 1946 ("First Midland Book edition 1960")
3. this work was the first attempt to translate the work into English; Evelyn translated only the first book after realizing that he didn't have the ability to write a translation, as he put it, "to equal the elegancy of the original", although some of his friends warned him of the danger of the atheistic work to his morals, spirituality and reputationDunlop, John Colin, [https://books.google.com/books?id=mBgOAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA575 ''History of Roman Literature, From Its Earliest Period to the Augustan Age''], p 575, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1823, retrieved via Google Books, May 31, 2009