1646 in literature

Events

• March 24 – The King's Men petition Parliament for three-and-a-half years' back pay, even though the London theatres officially remained closed through the middle 1640s. No details of their activities in these years survive.
• May 5 – Martin Llewellyn's drama The King Found at Southwell is performed at Oxford; it is the last stage piece presented in the city before its surrender to Parliamentary forces in the English Civil War on June 22–24.
• July – John Lilburne is placed in the Tower of London for denouncing his former commander the Earl of Manchester as a traitor.
• September 6 – The Biblioteca Palafoxiana is established in Puebla, Mexico, through the donation of books by Bishop Juan de Palafox y Mendoza, perhaps the earliest public library in the American colonies.
• unknown dates
• *Henry Burkhead's closet drama Cola's Fury, or Lirenda's Misery, based on the Irish Rebellion of 1641, is published in Kilkenny. Burkhead presents the historical persons involved under pseudonyms: among others, the Earl of Ormonde as "Osiris" and Sir John Borlase as "Berosus".
• *Jacqueline Pascal is converted to Jansenism, under the influence of her brother, Blaise Pascal.

  New books

Prose

• Anonymous – London's Liberty in Chains Discovered
• Anonymous – Vox Plebis, or the People's Outcry
• Sir Thomas Browne Pseudodoxia Epidemica or Vulgar Errors
• Thomas Fuller – Andronicus or the Unfortunate Politician
• Sir John Suckling – An Account of Religion by Reason published
• Vida y hechos de Estebanillo González
• Baltasar Gracián – El discreto
• Diego de Saavedra Fajardo – Corona gótica, castellana y austríaca

  Children

• John Cotton – Spiritual Milk for Boston Babes

  Drama

• Pierre Corneille – Théodore
• Jean de Rotrou
• *Célie
• *Le Veritable Saint Genest
• James Shirley – The Triumph of Beauty
• Sir John Suckling – Fragmenta Aurea, collected plays, including The Sad One

  Poetry

• Richard Crashaw – Steps to the Temple
• Martin Lluelyn – Men-Miracles
• John Milton – Poems of Mr. John Milton, Both English and Latin, compos'd at several times
• Francis Quarles – The Shepherds' Oracle
• James Shirley – Poems
• Henry Vaughan – Poems, with the Tenth Satire of Juvenal Englished

  Births

• March 19 – Michael Kongehl, German poet
• July 1 – Gottfried Leibniz, German mathematician and philosopher
• July 20 – Eusèbe Renaudot, French theologian and orientalist
• Probable – John Mason, English poet, cleric and hymnist

  Deaths

• August 19 – Alexander Henderson, Scottish theologian
• September 17 – Erycius Puteanus, Netherlandish philologist and encyclopedist
• October 23 – David Wedderburn, Scottish educationist and schoolbook author
• December 23 – François Maynard, French poet