1642 in literature

Events

• May – The 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.
• May/June – English Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace is incarcerated in the Gatehouse Prison, Westminster for defying Parliament. During his time there he may be writing "To Althea, from Prison".
• 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 18 years, during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew is reportedly staged on the final day, making it the last to be performed in the era of English Renaissance theatre.

  New books

Prose

• Thomas Browne – Religio Medici
• Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède – Cassandre
• Thomas Fuller – The Holy State and the Profane State
• Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft – Nederduytsche Historiën
• Sir Walter Ralegh – The Prince, or Maxims of State
• Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – La garduña de Sevilla y anzuelo de las bolsas
• Tohfatu'l-Ahbab, a Farsi work by Muhammad Ali Kashmiri

  Drama

• Antonio Coello – Los empeños de seis horas
• 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

  Poetry

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

  Births

• March 15 – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician and writer
• April 21 – Simon de la Loubère, French diplomat, writer, mathematician and poet
• April 30 – Christian Weise, German dramatist and poet
• December 30 – Vincenzo da Filicaja, Florentine poet
• Unknown dates
• Josep Romaguera, Catalan author
• *Ihara Saikaku, Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozōshi genre of prose
• *James Tyrrell, English political philosopher
• Probable year of birth
• *Thomas Shadwell, English dramatist
• *Edward Taylor, English-born colonial American poet and author

  Deaths

• May 14 – Nicolas Ysambert, French theologian
• June 1 – Sir John Suckling, English poet
• July 5 – Festus Hommius, Dutch Calvinist theologian
• Unknown dates
• *Abdul-Haqq Dehlavi, Indian Islamic scholar and writer
• *Sir Francis Kynaston, English poet
• *James Mabbe, English scholar, poet and translator