1696 in literature

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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1696.

Events

• January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
• November 21 – John Vanbrugh's first play, the comedy The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, a sequel to Love's Last Shift, is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Cibber in the cast.^[1]
• The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, stages The Female Wits, an anti-feminist satire targeting Mary Pix, Delarivier Manley and Catherine Trotter, the three significant women dramatists of the era. The play is a hit, and runs for three nights straight (unusual in the repertory system of the day).
• Tuscan poet Vincenzo da Filicaja becomes governor of Volterra.

New books

Prose

• John Aubrey – Miscellanies
• Philip Ayres – The Revengeful Mistress
• Aphra Behn – The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn (posthumous)
• Charles Leslie – The Snake in the Grass
• Mary Pix – The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (novel)
• John Suckling – The Works of Sir John Suckling
• John Tillotson – The Works of John Tillotson

Drama

• Anonymous – Bonduca, or The British Heroine (adapted from Fletcher's Bonduca)
• Anonymous – The Cornish Comedy^[2]
• Anonymous ("W. M.") – The Female Wits, or the Triumverate of Poets at Rehearsal
• John Banks – Cyrus the Great, or The Tragedy of Love
• Aphra Behn – The Younger Brother, or The Amorous Jilt
• Colley Cibber – Love's Last Shift
• Thomas Doggett – The Country Wake
• Thomas D'Urfey – The Comical History of Don Quixote. The Third Part
• George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne – The She-Gallants
• Joseph Harris – The City Bride; or, The Merry Cuckold (adapted from A Cure for a Cuckold)
• Charles Hopkins – Neglected Virtue; or, The Unhappy Conquerour
• Delarivier Manley
  • The Lost Lover, or The Jealous Husband
  • The Royal Mischief
• Peter Anthony Motteux
  • Love's a Jest
  • She Ventures and He Wins
• Mary Pix
  • The Spanish Wives
  • Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks
• Edward Ravenscroft – The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor
• Thomas Southerne – Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: a tragedy (adapted from Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko - published)
• John Vanbrugh – The Relapse

Poetry

• Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate – New Version of the Psalms of David
• John Dryden – An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell (died 1695)
• John Oldmixon – Poems on Several Occasions
• Elizabeth Rowe – Poems on Several Occasions
• Nahum Tate – Miscellanea Sacra; or, Poems on Divine & Moral Subjects

Non-fiction

• Richard Baxter – Reliquiae Baxterianae (posthumous)
• John Bellers – Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry
• Gerard Croese – The General History of the Quakers (translation)
• An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (anonymous)
• Delarivier Manley – Letters Written by Mrs. Manley
• William Penn – Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers
• John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby – The Character of Charles II, King of England
• John Toland – Christianity not Mysterious^[3]
• William Whiston – A New Theory of the Earth

Births

• July 14 – William Oldys, English antiquary, bibliographer and poet (died 1761)
• October 13 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English memoirist and courtier (died 1743)
• Unknown date – Matthew Green, English writer of light verse and customs official (died 1737)

Deaths

• January 3 – Mary Mollineux, English Quaker poet (born c.1651)
• March 18 – Bonaventura Baron, Irish theologian, philosopher and writer in Latin (born 1610)
• April 27 – Simon Foucher, French polemic philosopher (born 1644)
• May 10 – Jean de La Bruyère, French essayist (born 1645)
• June 9 – Antoine Varillas, French historian (born 1626)
• August 9 – Wacław Potocki, Polish nobleman (Szlachta), moralist, Baroque poet and writer (born 1621)
• September 8 – Henry Birkhead, English academic, lawyer, Latin poet and founder of the Oxford Chair of Poetry (born 1617)
• November 26 – Gregório de Matos, Brazilian Baroque poet (born 1636)
• Unknown dates
  • Jón Magnússon, Icelandic writer (born c. 1610)
  • Gesshū Sōko (月舟宗胡), Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher, poet and calligrapher (born 1618)

References

1. Palmer, Alan; Palmer, Veronica (1992). The Chronology of British History. London: Century Ltd. pp. 200–201. ISBN 0-7126-5616-2.
2. David S Berkeley, "The Penitent Rake in Restoration Comedy", Modern Philology, vol 49, no 4, May 1952. Accessed 26 April 2013
3. Berman, David (1995). Honderich, Ted, ed. The Oxford Companion to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 877. ISBN 0-19-866132-0.