1642 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1642.

Events

May â 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.^[1]
May/June â 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".^[2]
September 2 â London theatre closure 1642: The theatres in London are closed by order of the Puritan Long Parliament; 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 legitimately performed in the era of English Renaissance theatre.

Thomas Browne â Religio Medici
Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la CalprenÃ¨de â Cassandre
Thomas Fuller â The Holy State and the Profane State
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft â Nederduytsche HistoriÃ«n (History of the Netherlands, publication begins)
Sir Walter Ralegh â The Prince, or Maxims of State
Alonso de Castillo SolÃ³rzano â La garduÃ±a de Sevilla y anzuelo de las bolsas
Tohfatu'l-Ahbab, a Persian-language work by Muhammad Ali Kashmiri^[3]

John Denham â 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 â "To Althea, from Prison"
Alonso de Castillo SolÃ³rzano â Academias morales de las musas

March 15 (baptised) â Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician and writer (died 1711)
April 21 â Simon de la LoubÃ¨re, French diplomat, writer, mathematician and poet (died 1729)
April 30 â Christian Weise, German dramatist and poet (died 1708)^[4]
December 30 â Vincenzo da Filicaja, Florentine poet (died 1707)
Unknown dates
- Abdul-QÄdir BÄ«del, Persian Sufi poet (died 1720)
- Josep Romaguera, Catalan author (died 1723)
- Ihara Saikaku (äºå è¥¿é¶´), Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozÅshi (floating world) 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)

May 14 â Nicolas Ysambert, French theologian (born c. 1565)
June 1 â Sir John Suckling, English poet (born 1609)
July 5 â Festus Hommius, Dutch Calvinist theologian (born 1576)^[5]
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)