1667 in literature

Events

• January – Courtier Tobias Rustat creates the first endowment for the purchase of books for Cambridge University Library in England.
• March 2 – The première of John Dryden's tragicomedy Secret Love, or The Maiden Queen at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London is well received by an audience including King Charles II of England, his brother the Duke of York and Samuel Pepys. The cast includes Nell Gwyn in one of the first breeches roles in Restoration theatre and her lover Charles Hart.
• April 15 - Edward Howard's play The Change of Crowns is first performed, in London. Actor John Lacy improvises a few lines about influence-peddling at court, angering King Charles II, a member of the audience. The theatre is closed for a time and Lacy jailed.
• April 27 – The blind, impoverished 58-year-old John Milton seals a contract for publication of Paradise Lost with London printer Samuel Simmons for an initial payment of £5. The first edition is published in October and sells out in eighteen months.
• July – English scholar and poet Edmund Castell is imprisoned for debt.
• July 28 – For the second time in his life, playwright Thomas Porter mortally wounds an opponent in a duel, and is then forced to flee from England.
• August 6 – Molière's satirical comedy Tartuffe receives its première in a revised form as L'Imposteur and is immediately banned.
• August 20 – Molière writes his Lettre sur la comédie de l'Imposteur in response to criticisms of Tartuffe.
• September 12 – Sir William Davenant's adaptation of the old play Greene's Tu Quoque is first performed.
• November – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, is impeached by Parliament and forced into exile in France, where he spends the rest of his life working on his history of the English Civil War.
• November 7 – The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island, an adaptation of Shakespeare's Tempest by John Dryden and Sir William Davenant, receives its première by the Duke's Company at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in London; it becomes "the most frequently revived play of the entire Restoration".

New books

Prose

• Margaret Cavendish – The life of the thrice noble, high and puissant prince William Cavendishe, Duke, Marquess, and Earl of Newcastle
• John Dryden – Annus Mirabilis, the Year of Wonders 1666
• Richard Head – The life and death of Mother Shipton
• Thomas Sprat – The History of the Royal Society

  Drama

• Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery – The Black Prince
• J. Caryl – The English Princess, or the Death of Richard III
• Pierre Corneille – Attila
• William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle – The Humorous Lovers
• John Dryden – Secret Love, or the Maiden Queen
• Richard Flecknoe – The Damoiselles à la Mode
• Edward Howard – The Change of Crowns
• James Howard – All Mistaken
• John Lacy – Sauny the Scot, or the Taming of the Shrew
• Jean Racine – Andromaque
• Sir Charles Sedley – Antony and Cleopatra
• Elkanah Settle – Cambyses, King of Persia
• Sir Thomas St. Serfe – Tarugo's Wiles

  Poetry

• Jeremias de Dekker – Lof der Geldzucht
• John Milton – Paradise Lost

  Births

• April 29 – John Arbuthnot, Scottish satirist and polymath
• November 30 – Jonathan Swift, Irish satirist and novelist
• unknown dates
• *John Richardson, English Quaker preacher and autobiographer
• *Ned Ward, English satirical writer and publican

  Deaths

• January 19 – Percy Herbert, 2nd Baron Powis, English writer
• March 16 – Philippe Labbe, French Jesuit writer
• May 2 – George Wither, English poet and pamphleteer
• May 14 – Georges de Scudéry, French poet
• August 13 – Jeremy Taylor, English religious writer and bishop
• November – Grigory Kotoshikhin, Russian writer and diplomat
• probable – John Heydon, English Rosicrucian and writer on the occult