1621 in literature

Events

• January 27 – Sir Francis Bacon is created Viscount St Alban.
• February 3 – John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton telling him the anonymous author of the tract Vox Populi has been revealed to be the radical preacher Thomas Scott.
• May 3 – Sir Francis Bacon is imprisoned in the Tower of London after being convicted of receiving bribes, but pardoned by King James I later in the year.
• August 26 – Barten Holyday's allegorical play Technogamia, originally produced at Christ Church, Oxford in 1618, is staged before James I at Woodstock Palace. He dislikes it, but is persuaded to stay to the end for the student actors' sakes.
• September 24 – The earliest known copy of the Corante, generally regarded as the first English newspaper, is published.
• November 22 – The English poet John Donne is installed as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
• December 30 – The Spanish writer Francisco de Borja y Aragón is replaced as Viceroy of Peru by Juan Jiménez de Montalvo, and embarks for home on the following day.

• Jeremias Drexel gives up preaching in order to write a biography of Elisabeth of Lorraine.

  New books

Prose

• William Alabaster – De bestia Apocalypsis
• Robert Burton – The Anatomy of Melancholy
• Méric Casaubon – Pietas contra maledicos patrii Nominis et Religionis Hostes
• Mao Yuanyi – Wubei Zhi
• John Reynolds – The triumphs of Gods revenge, against the crying, and execrable sinne of murther
• Rachel Speght – Mortalities Memorandum
• John Taylor – Taylor's Motto
• John Widdowes – A Description of the World
• Lady Mary Wroth – The Countess of Montgomery's Urania

  Drama

• Francis Beaumont, John Fletcher, & Philip Massinger – Thierry and Theodoret
• Thomas Dekker, John Ford, & William Rowley – The Witch of Edmonton
• Ben Jonson – The Gypsies Metamorphosed
• Tirso de Molina – El vergonzoso en palacio

  Poetry

• George Wither – Wither's Motto

  Births

• January 27 – Thomas Willis, English physician and natural philosopher
• March 18 – Henry Teonge, English diarist and naval chaplain
• March 31 – Andrew Marvell, English poet
• April 25 – Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Anglo-Irish dramatist
• July 8 – Jean de La Fontaine, French author of fables
• December 3 – Bohuslav Balbín, Czech Jesuit writer
• December 14 – Thomas Long, English writer and cleric
• unknown date – Jane Cavendish, English poet and playwright
• probable – Françoise Bertaut de Motteville, French memoirist
• Possible year – Richard Allestree, English scholar and cleric

  Deaths

• January 25 – François Pithou, French author and jurist
• March 4 – Ana de Jesús, Spanish nun and writer
• May 11 – Johann Arndt, German theologian
• June – William Strachey, English eye-witness historian
• August 3 – Guillaume du Vair, French writer
• August 15 – John Barclay, Scottish writer
• September 25 – Mary Sidney, English playwright and translator
• October 7 or 8 – Antoine de Montchrestien, French adventurer and dramatist
• December 4 – Andrew Willet, English polemicist and cleric
• unknown date – Ludwig Hollonius, German dramatist

  Notelist