1648 in literature

	… 1638; 1639; 1640; 1641; 1642; 1643; 1644; ; 1645; 1646; 1647; 1648; 1649; 1650; 1651; ; 1652; 1653; 1654; 1655; 1656; 1657; 1658 …;
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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1648.

Events

February
- Ordinances are passed in England against plays; actors are to be fined and theatres pulled down.^[1]
- Richard Flecknoe sails from Lisbon to Brazil.^[2]
April 7 – Edward Pococke becomes Professor of Hebrew at the University of Oxford, in succession to Dr Morris.
April 16 – René Descartes meets Frans Burman, resulting in the Conversation with Burman.^[3]
June 9 – Richard Lovelace, an English Cavalier poet, begins his second imprisonment for opposition to Parliament.^[4]
June – Pierre Gassendi, having given up lecturing at the Collège Royal because of ill-health, returns to his home area of Digne.^[5]
July 14 – During the siege of Colchester, a cannon nicknamed Humpty Dumpty, is blown off the walls, possibly inspiring the nursery rhyme.
December – King Charles I is imprisoned in Windsor Castle, where he reportedly spends much of his time reading the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson.
unknown dates
- Robert Boyle writes Seraphic Love, his first important work. Although it will not be published until 1660, he produces presentation copies for friends.^[6]
- Richard Crashaw, exiled in Paris, publishes two hymns in Latin.
- King Frederick III of Denmark establishes the Royal Library, Denmark.^[7]

New books

Prose

Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède – Cléopâtre
Robert Filmer – Freeholders Grand Inquest touching our Sovereign Lord the King and his Parliament
Thomas Gage – The English-American, or a New Survey of the West Indies
Baltasar Gracián – Agudeza y arte de ingenio
Francisco Martínez de Mata – Memorial a razón de la despoblación y pobreza de España y su remedio
José García de Salcedo Coronel – Comentarios al Panegírico del Duque de Lerma de Luis de Góngora
Fray Marcos de Salmerón – El príncipe escondido
Madeleine de Scudéry – Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus, volume 1^[8]
John Wilkins – Mathematical Magick
Gerrard Winstanley – The Mystery of God

Drama

Anonymous – Crafty Cromwell
Anonymous – Kentish Fair, or the Parliament Sold to Their Best Worth^[9]
Anonymous ("Mercurius Melancholicus") – Mistress Parliament Her Gossiping^[10]
Jasper Mayne – The Amorous War

Poetry

Christen Aagaard – Threni Hyperborci^[11]
Richard Corbet – Poetica Stromata
Mildmay Fane, 2nd Earl of Westmorland – Otia Sacra
Robert Herrick^[12]
- Hesperides
- Noble Numbers
Francisco de Borja y Aragón – Obras en verso^[13]
Francisco López de Zárate – La invención de la Cruz^[14]
Francisco de Quevedo (ed. Jusepe Antonio González de Salas) – El Parnaso español, en dos cumbre dividido, con las nueve musas

Births

February 1 – Elkanah Settle, English poet and dramatist (died 1724)
November 12 – Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexican Hieronymite nun, polymath, poet and playwright (died 1695)
Unknown date – Gaspard Abeille, French poet (died 1718)
Earliest year – Mihai Iștvanovici, Wallachian typographer and poet (died c. 1720)

Deaths

February 2 – George Abbot, English writer (born c. 1603)
February 22 – Wilhelm Lamormaini, Luxembourgish Jesuit theologian (born 1570)
March 12 – Tirso de Molina, Spanish dramatist (born 1571)^[15]
May 26 – Vincent Voiture, French writer and poet (born 1597)^[16]
May 28 (bur.) – William Percy, English poet and playwright (born 1570/74)^[17]
July 31 – Benedictus van Haeften, Dutch theologian (born 1588)
August 20 – Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury Anglo-Welsh writer and soldier (born 1574)^[18]
September 1 – Marin Mersenne, French theologian and philosopher (born 1588)
December 16 – Arthur Duck, English lawyer and author (born 1580)^[19]

References

^ Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 182–183. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
^ Fred Mayer (1987). The Prose Characters of Richard Flecknoe: A Critical Edition. Garland. p. lxxii. ISBN 978-0-8240-6019-0.
^ René Descartes: Principles of Philosophy: Translated, with Explanatory Notes. Springer Science & Business Media. 6 December 2012. p. 64. ISBN 978-94-009-7888-1.
^ Life of Richard Lovelace.
^ Abbé A. Martin (1854). Histoire de la vie et des écrits de Pierre Gassendi. p. 149.
^ Lawrence Principe (8 October 2000). The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest. Princeton University Press. p. 231. ISBN 0-691-05082-1.
^ David H. Stam (November 2001). International Dictionary of Library Histories. Routledge. p. 157. ISBN 978-1-136-77785-1.
^ German Aesthetic and Literary Criticism: Winckelmann, Lessing, Hamann, Herder, Schiller and Goethe. Cambridge University Press. 1985. p. 288.
^ Harbage, Alfred (1989). Annals of English drama, 975-1700 : an analytical record of all plays, extant or lost, chronologically arranged and indexed by authors, titles, dramatic companies, & c. London New York: Routledge. p. 282. ISBN 9780415010993.
^ Elmer, Peter (2016). Witchcraft, witch-hunting, and politics in early modern England. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. p. 316. ISBN 9780198717720.
^ The New American Cyclopædia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge. D. Appleton. 1873. p. 2.
^ Marcus, Leah (1996). Unediting the Renaissance: Shakespeare, Marlowe, Milton. London New York: Routledge. p. 183. ISBN 9780415099349.
^ Belmonte, Javier (2007). Las obras en verso del príncipe de Esquilache: amateurismo y conciencia literaria. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK Rochester, NY: Tamesis. p. 106. ISBN 9781855661493.
^ J. Bertrand Payne (2020). Haydn's Universal Index of Biography. Salzwasser-Verlag GmbH. p. 584. ISBN 9783846047705.
^ Darst, David (1974). The comic art of Tirso de Molina. Chapel Hill Madrid: Dept. of Romance Languages, University of North Carolina Distribuido por Editorial Castalia. p. 11. ISBN 9788439920557.
^ Smet, Ingrid (1996). Menippean satire and the republic of letters, 1581-1655. Genève: Librairie Droz. p. 231. ISBN 9782600001472.
^ Bodleian Library, MS Wood F.4, p. 83; qtd. Harold N. Hillebrand, "William Percy: An Elizabethan Amateur," Huntington Library Quarterly 1 (1938): 400.
^ 1648 in literature at the Encyclopædia Britannica
^ "Duck, Arthur" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.