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.

New books

• 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

New drama

• Antonio Coello - Los empeños de seis horas (approximate date)
• Pierre Corneille - Polyeucte
• François le Métel de Boisrobert - La Belle Palène
• Donaires del gusto
• Pierre du Ryer - Saul
• Francis Jaques - The Queen of Corsica
• James Shirley - The Sisters
• Jan Vos - Klucht van Oene ("The Farce of Oene")

New poetry

• John Denham - Cooper's Hill
• Richard Lovelace - "To Althea, from Prison"
• Alonso de Castillo Solórzano - Academias morales de ls musas

Births

• 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, Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozōshi 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)

Deaths

• 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)

In literature

• June - Opening of Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850).

References