1696 in literature

Events

• January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
• March 5 – William Penn marries his second wife, Hannah Callowhill.
• September – The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, stages The Female Wits, an anti-feminist satire targeting Mary Pix, Delarivier Manley and Catherine Trotter, the three significant women dramatists of the era. The play is a hit, and runs for three nights straight (unusual in the repertory system of the day).
• November 21 – John Vanbrugh's first play, the comedy The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, a sequel to Love's Last Shift, is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Cibber in the cast.
• unknown date
  • The Tuscan poet Vincenzo da Filicaja becomes governor of Volterra.
  • Chapbook peddlers in England are required to hold a licence.

New books

Fiction

• John Aubrey – Miscellanies
• Philip Ayres – The Revengeful Mistress
• Aphra Behn (died 1689) – The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn
• Charles Leslie – The Snake in the Grass
• Mary Pix – The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (novel)
• John Suckling – The Works of Sir John Suckling
• John Tillotson – The Works of John Tillotson

Drama

• John Banks – Cyrus the Great, or The Tragedy of Love
• Aphra Behn – The Younger Brother
• Colley Cibber – Love's Last Shift
• Thomas Dilke – The City Lady
• Thomas Doggett – The Country Wake
• Thomas D'Urfey – The Comical History of Don Quixote. The Third Part
• George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne – The She-Gallants
• Joseph Harris – The City Bride; or, The Merry Cuckold (adapted from A Cure for a Cuckold)
• Charles Hopkins – Neglected Virtue
• Delarivier Manley
  • The Lost Lover, or The Jealous Husband
  • The Royal Mischief
• Peter Anthony Motteux
  • Love's a Jest
  • She Ventures and He Wins
• Mary Pix
  • The Spanish Wives
  • Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks
• Edward Ravenscroft – The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor
• Thomas Southerne – Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: a tragedy (adapted from Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko - published)
• John Vanbrugh – The Relapse

Poetry

• Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate – New Version of the Psalms of David
• John Dryden – An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell (died 1695)
• John Oldmixon – Poems on Several Occasions
• Elizabeth Singer Rowe – Poems on Several Occasions
• Nahum Tate – Miscellanea Sacra; or, Poems on Divine & Moral Subjects

Non-fiction

• Richard Baxter – Reliquiae Baxterianae (posthumous)
• John Bellers – Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry
• Gerard Croese – The General History of the Quakers (translation)
• Judith Drake (attributed) – An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (anonymous)
• Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz – Analyse des infiniment petits pour l'intelligence des lignes courbes
• Delarivier Manley – Letters Written by Mrs. Manley
• William Penn – Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers
• John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby – The Character of Charles II, King of England
• John Toland – Christianity not Mysterious
• William Whiston – A New Theory of the Earth

Births

• July 14 – William Oldys, English antiquary, bibliographer and poet (died 1761)
• September 25 – Madame du Deffand, French literary hostess (died 1780)
• October 13 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English memoirist and courtier (died 1743)
• Unknown date – Matthew Green, English writer of light verse and customs official (died 1737)

Deaths

• January 3 – Mary Mollineux, English Quaker poet (born c.1651)
• March 14 – Jean Domat, French jurist (born 1625)
• March 18 – Bonaventura Baron, Irish theologian, philosopher and writer in Latin (born 1610)
• April 17 – Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, French author (born 1626)
• April 27 – Simon Foucher, French polemic philosopher (born 1644)
• May 10 – Jean de La Bruyère, French essayist (born 1645)
• June 9 – Antoine Varillas, French historian (born 1626)
• August 9 – Wacław Potocki, Polish nobleman (Szlachta), moralist, Baroque poet and writer (born 1621)
• September 8 – Henry Birkhead, English academic, lawyer, Latin poet and founder of the Oxford Chair of Poetry (born 1617)
• November 26 – Gregório de Matos, Brazilian Baroque poet (born 1636)
• December 31 – Samuel Annesley, English Puritan minister noted for his sermons (born c.1620)
• Unknown dates
  • Jón Magnússon, Icelandic writer (born c. 1610)
  • Gesshū Sōko (月舟宗胡), Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher, poet and calligrapher (born 1618)

References

References

1. (1975). "A Biographical Dictionary of Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers and Other Stage Personnel in London, 1660-1800: Cabanel to Cory". SIU Press.
2. (2000). "Summer Theatre in London, 1661-1820, and the Rise of the Haymarket Theatre". Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press.
3. Palmer, Alan. (1992). "The Chronology of British History". Century Ltd.
4. Mark A. Schneider. (15 December 1993). "Culture and Enchantment". University of Chicago Press.
5. Thomas DOGGET. (1696). "The Country Wake: a comedy. In five acts and in prose".
6. (2 July 1971). "The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 2, 1660-1800". Cambridge University Press.
7. (1696). "She Ventures, and He Wins. A comedy ...". For Hen. Rhodes.
8. (2 July 1971). "The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 2, 1660-1800". Cambridge University Press.
9. John Dryden. (29 September 1976). "The Works of John Dryden, Volume XV: Plays: Albion and Albanius, Don Sebastian, Amphitryon". University of California Press.
10. W.H.G. Armytage. (15 October 2013). "Heavens Below: Utopian Experiments in England, 1560-1960". Routledge.
11. William Penn. (1857). "Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People Called Quakers". Miller & Burlock.
12. Berman, David. (1995). "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy". Oxford University Press.
13. (16 December 2013). "Women Writers of Great Britain and Europe: An Encyclopedia". Routledge.
14. Holthöfer, Ernst. (2001). "Juristen: ein biographisches Lexikon; von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert". Beck.
15. Tilley, Arthur Augustus. (2016). "Madame de Sévigné: Some Aspects of Her Life and Character". Cambridge University Press.
16. Jean de La Bruyère. (1970). "Characters". Penguin Books.
17. (1843). "Penny Cyclopaedia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge". C. Knight.
18. John A Newton ‘ Samuel Annesley 1620-1696)’ Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society v.XLV 1985-6 pp 29-45 p.37