1639 in literature

Events

• c. January – The first printing press in British North America is launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Stephen Daye.
• February 14 – French writers Jacques Esprit and François de La Mothe Le Vayer are elected to the Académie française.
• May 21 – The King's Men act John Fletcher's The Mad Lover in London.
• December – Blaise Pascal's family move to Rouen.
• December 7 – Francisco de Quevedo is arrested and imprisoned at León, Spain.
• unknown dates
• *Simon Dach becomes professor of poetry at the University of Königsberg.
• *Archbishop William Laud donates the manuscript of the Peterborough Chronicle to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
• *Thomas Heywood writes Londini Status Pacatus, the Lord Mayor of the City of London's annual pageant. It will be the last such in London for 15 years, due to the English Civil War, but will resume under the Commonwealth.

  New books

Prose

• Jean du Vergier de Hauranne – Théologie familière, ou Instruction de ce que le Chrétien doit croire et faire en cette vie pour être sauvé
• Francisco de Quevedo – La isla de los monopantos
• Jan Marek Marci – De proportione motus seu regula sphygmica
• Friedrich Spanheim – Commentaire historique de la vie et de la mort de.. Christofle Vicomte de Dohna
• Henry Spelman – Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in re Ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici

  Drama

• Lodowick Carlell – Arviragus and Philicia, Parts 1 and 2
• George Chapman and James Shirley – The Tragedy of Chabot
• Aston Cockayne – A Masque at Bretbie
• Pierre Corneille – L'Illusion comique,
• T. D. – The Bloody Banquet
• William Davenant – The Spanish Lovers
• Robert Davenport – A New Trick to Cheat the Devil
• John Fletcher
• * Monsieur Thomas
• *Wit Without Money
• Henry Glapthorne
• *Argalus and Parthenia
• *Albertus Wallenstein
• Sir William Lower – The Phoenix in Her Flames
• Philip Massinger – The Unnatural Combat published
• Jasper Mayne – The City Match
• James Shirley
• *The Politician
• *The Ball
• *The Maid's Revenge
• *The Changes, or Love in a Maze
• Sir John Suckling – Brennoralt, or the Discontented Colonel

  Poetry

• Richard Corbet – Certain Elegant Poems
• John Clarke – Paroemiologia
• Henry Glapthorne – Poems, including a series addressed to "Lucinda"
• Francis Quarles – Memorials Upon the Death of Sir Robert Quarles, Knight

  Births

• February 6 – Daniel Georg Morhof, German critic
• December 22 – Jean Racine, French dramatist
• unknown dates
• *Thomas Ellwood, English religious writer
• *César Vichard de Saint-Réal, French novelist
• probable – Charles Sedley, English wit and dramatist

  Deaths

• January – Shackerley Marmion, English dramatist
• January 23 – Francisco Maldonado de Silva, Argentinian poet
• May 21 – Tommaso Campanella, Italian poet and theologian
• August 4 – Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, New Spanish dramatist
• August 20 – Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet
• October – Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, English poet, translator and dramatist
• November 26 – John Spottiswoode, Scottish historian