1689 in literature

The year 1689 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• Jonathan Swift becomes secretary to Sir William Temple.

New books

• Sir Richard Cox - Hibernia Anglicana
• John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• John Selden - Table Talk - (published posthumously)
• Janez Vajkard Valvasor - The Glory of the Duchy of Carniola (Die Ehre des Herzogtums Crain, Slava vojvodine Kranjske)'

New drama

• Aphra Behn - The Widow Ranter
• James Carlisle - The Fortune Hunters, or Two Fools Well Met
• John Crowne - The English Friar, or the Town Sparks
• James Farewell - The Irish Hudibras
• Sor Juana - Amor es más labertino (Love the Greater Labyrinth)
• Nathaniel Lee - The Massacre of Paris
• Thomas Shadwell - The Amorous Bigotte
  • - Bury Fair

Births

• January 18 - Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, French satirist (died 1755)
• May 26 - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (died 1762)
• July 9 - Alexis Piron, French epigrammatist (died 1773)
• August 19 - Samuel Richardson, English novelist (died 1761)

Deaths

• February 21 - Isaac Vossius, collector of manuscripts (born 1618)
• April 16 - Aphra Behn, the first British woman to support herself by writing (born 1640)
• August 21 - William Cleland, poet (born c.1661)
• date unknown - Pjetër Bogdani, early Albanian-language author (born c.1630)

In later fiction

In the 1988 novel Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić the climactic event where the scholar/warrior Avram Brankovich dies takes place in 1689.

Sources

• Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić published 1988, English translation by Christina Pribićević-Zorić.