1672 in literature

Events

• January 25 – London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is destroyed by fire. The King's Company moves to the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which the rival Duke's Company left the previous year.
• June – Thomas Killigrew mounts another all-female production of his The Parson's Wedding with the King's Company. Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Dryden's The Maiden Queen are also staged with all-women casts new prologues by Dryden for the productions.
• September 13 – John Bunyan is released after twelve years' imprisonment for preaching without a licence.
• December - John Dryden's play Marriage à la Mode first performed in London by the King's Company.
• The Mercure de France is first published under the title Mercure galant).

  New books

Prose

• Nicolás Antonio – Bibliotheca Hispana Nova
• Nicolas Denys – Description Géographique et Historique des Costes de l’Amérique Septentrionale
• Richard Cumberland – De legibus naturae
• Melchor Fuster – Conceptos predicables
• Gadla Walatta Petros
• Nathaniel Hodges – Loimologia
• James Janeway – A Token for Children, Part 2
• John Milton – Art of Logic
• Pierre Nicole – A Discourse Against Plays and Romances
• César Vichard de Saint-Réal – Dom Carlos

  Drama

• Anonymous – Emilia
• Anonymous – The Illustrious Slaves
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca
• *Eco y Narciso
• *El hijo del sol, Faetón
• *La niña de Gómez Arias
• Thomas Corneille – Ariane
• John Dryden
• *The Assignation
• *Marriage à la mode
• John Lacy – The Old Troop published
• Molière – Les Femmes Savantes
• Henry Nevil Payne – The Morning Ramble
• Jean Racine – Bajazet
• Thomas Shadwell
• *Epsom Wells
• *The Miser
• George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham – The Rehearsal published

  Poetry

• Miguel de Barrios – El coro de las musas

  Births

• January 18 – Antoine Houdar de la Motte, French writer,
• March – Sir Richard Steele, Irish dramatist, satirist and politician
• May 1 – Joseph Addison, English essayist, poet and politician
• August 2 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss paleontologist, historian and travel writer
• October 27 – Maria Gustava Gyllenstierna, Swedish writer

  Deaths

• June 14 – Matthew Wren, English scholar and cleric
• June 20 – Alonso Andrada, Spanish biographer and ascetic writer
• September 12 – Tanneguy Le Fèvre, French classicist
• September 16 – Anne Bradstreet, pioneering American female author
• November 21 – Robert Creighton, Scottish classicist, politician and bishop