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

Events

• May – 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 – 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 – The theatres in London are closed by the Puritan government; 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 performed in the era of English Renaissance theatre.

New books

Prose

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

Drama

• Antonio Coello – Los empeños de seis horas (approximate date)
• Pierre Corneille – Polyeucte
• François le Métel de Boisrobert – La Belle Palène
• Donaires del gusto
• Pierre du Ryer – Saul
• Francis Jaques – The Queen of Corsica
• James Shirley – The Sisters
• Jan Vos – Klucht van Oene (The Farce of Oene)

Poetry

• John Denham – 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 – "To Althea, from Prison"
• Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – Academias morales de las musas

Births

• March 15 (baptised) – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician and writer (died 1711)
• April 21 – Simon de la Loubère, French diplomat, writer, mathematician and poet (died 1729)
• April 30 – Christian Weise, German dramatist and poet (died 1708)^[4]
• December 30 – Vincenzo da Filicaja, Florentine poet (died 1707)
• Unknown dates
  • Abdul-Qādir Bīdel, Persian Sufi poet (died 1720)
  • Josep Romaguera, Catalan author (died 1723)
  • Ihara Saikaku (井原 西鶴), Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozōshi (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)

Deaths

• May 14 – Nicolas Ysambert, French theologian (born c. 1565)
• June 1 – Sir John Suckling, English poet (born 1609)
• July 5 – 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)