1683 in literature

Events

• May 17 – Jordaan Luchtmans, the predecessor of Brill Publishers, is registered as a bookseller by the Leiden booksellers' guild.
• May 25 – Lancelot Addison is appointed Dean of Lichfield.
• June 26 – Madame de La Fayette is widowed.
• August/September – John Locke flees to the Netherlands, under suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot in England.
• November 4 – Marriage of André Dacier and Anne Lefèvre in Paris.
• December 7 – English parliamentarian Algernon Sidney is executed for treason, based largely on the anti-monarchist views expressed in his Discourses Concerning Government, in manuscript
• unknown dates
  • John Banks' historical play The Innocent Usurper, about Lady Jane Grey, is banned from the stage by the censors.
  • A public library is first recorded at Kirkwall on Orkney.

New books

Fiction

• Alexander Oldys (?) – The London Jilt; or, the Politick Whore
• "Abbé du Prat" (pseudonym) – Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in her Smock (Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise)

Drama

• Joshua Barnes – Landgartha, or the Amazon Queen of Denmark and Norway
• Chikamatsu Monzaemon – Yotsugi Soga (The Soga Successors/The Soga Heir)
• John Crowne – City Politiques
• John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee – The Duke of Guise
• Nathaniel Lee – Constantine the Great
• Thomas Otway – The Atheist
• Edward Ravenscroft – Dame Dobson
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz – Los empeños de una casa (The Trials of a Noble House)
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca – El pintor de su deshonra

Poetry

• Robert Gould – Love Given O'er: Or a Satyr on the Inconstancy of Woman

Non-fiction

• "R. B." (i. e. Nathaniel Crouch), compiled – Two Journeys to Jerusalem
• John Dryden – Plutarch (one of the first biographies in the English language)
• Joseph Moxon – Mechanick Exercises
• John Pordage – Theologia Mystica
• Dr. Thomas Sydenham – Tractatus de podagra et hydrope

Births

• April 3 – Mark Catesby, English naturalist (died 1749)
• December 27 – Conyers Middleton, English controversialist and cleric (died 1750)

Deaths

• January 15 – Philip Warwick, English writer and politician (born 1609)
• March 19 – Thomas Killigrew, English dramatist and manager (born 1612)
• August – Ralph Josselin, English diarist and Anglican cleric (born 1616)
• August 24 – John Owen, English theologian (born 1616)
• October 20 – Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, French novelist and dramatist (born 1640)
• November 18 – Innokentiy Gizel, Ukrainian historian (born c. 1600)
• December 15 – Izaak Walton, English writer and biographer (born 1593)

References

References

1. van der Veen, Sytze. (2008). "Brill: 325 Years of Scholarly Publishing". Brill.
2. Green, Karen. (4 December 2014). "A History of Women's Political Thought in Europe, 1700–1800". Cambridge University Press.
3. Payne, Deborah. (11 May 2000). "The Cambridge Companion to English Restoration Theatre". Cambridge University Press.
4. "History". Orkney Archive.
5. Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim. (21 August 2013). "The Annals of English Drama 975-1700". Routledge.
6. (16 May 1991). "The Diary of Ralph Josselin, 1616–1683". OUP/British Academy.
7. Thomas Zouch. (1826). "The Life of Izaak Walton: Including Notices of His Contemporaries". T. Gosden.