1682 in literature

Events

• In London, the King's Company and the Duke's Company join to form the United Company of actors.
• In Paris, the Bibliothèque Mazarine reopens at the Collège des Quatre-Nations.
• In Japan, Ihara Saikaku's The Life of an Amorous Man inaugurates what becomes known as ukiyo-zōshi, the first major genre of popular Japanese fiction.

  New books

Prose

• John Bunyan – The Holy War
• Francisco Nunez de Cepeda – Idea del buen pastor representada en Empresas sacras
• William Penn
• *Frame of Government of Pennsylvania
• *
• Mary Rowlandson – Narrative of the Captivity
• Ihara Saikaku – The Life of an Amorous Man
• Bulstrode Whitelocke – Memorials of the English Affairs from the Beginning of the Reign of Charles I

  Children and young people

• Dorcas Dole – Salutation and Seasonable Exhortation to Children

  Drama

• John Banks – The Unhappy Favourite, or the Earl of Essex
• John Banks – Vertue Betray'd
• John Dryden – MacFlecknoe
• John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee – The Duke of Guise
• Thomas d'Urfey
• *The Injured Princess
• *The Royalist
• Thomas Otway – Venice Preserv'd
• William Shakespeare adapted by Nahum Tate – Coriolanus
• Thomas Southerne – The Persian Prince, or the Loyal Brother
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca – Verdadera V parte de comedias

  Poetry

• Nahum Tate – Absalom and Achitophel, part 2

  Births

• October 2 – Birgitte Christine Kaas, Norwegian poet and translator
• October 29 – Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, French historian
• Unknown date – Jacopo Facciolati, Paduan lexicographer and philologist

  Deaths

• March 12 – Francis Sempill, Scottish poet and wit
• October 19 – Sir Thomas Browne, English polymath and poet
• November 14 – Rijcklof van Goens, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies 1678-1681 and travel writer
• Unknown dates
• *Philip Hunton, English clergyman and political writer
• *Francisco Núñez de Pineda y Bascuñán, Chilean writer and soldier