1650 in literature

Events

• February 22 – Parliament appoints a commission for the propagation and preaching of the gospel in Wales, advised by Vavasor Powell. The Act for the better propagation and preaching of the Gospel in Wales is passed by Parliament, resulting in the ejection of dissident clergymen and creating English-language schools.
• November – Blaise Pascal and his family return to Paris, after an 18-month retreat to Clermont-Ferrand.
• Despite the official prohibition against stage plays in England, theatrical manager and promoter William Beeston finances repairs to the Cockpit Theatre and attempts to assemble and train a company of young actors. His effort is unsuccessful.
• Under this year's Blasphemy Act, English radical Jacob Bauthumley is arrested, convicted and has his tongue pierced on account of his book The Light and Dark Sides of God.
• Robert Baron publishes his plagiarized work Pocula Castalia, stealing mainly from the minor poems of John Milton issued in 1645.
• At about this date Agneta Horn writes her autobiography, Agneta Horns leverne, in Swedish; it will not be discovered until 1885.

  New books

Prose

• Elias Ashmole – Fasciculus Chemicus
• Richard Flecknoe – The Idea of His Highness Oliver...
• Jonas Moore – Moores Arithmetick
• Francisco de Quevedo – La hora de todos y la fortuna con seso
• George Walker – Anglo-Tyrannus

  Drama

• François le Métel de Boisrobert – La Jalouse d'elle-même
• Abraham Cowley – The Guardian
• Francisco de Rojas Zorrilla – Del rey abajo, ninguno

  Poetry

• Anne Bradstreet – The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America
• Andrew Marvell – An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland
• Francisco de Trillo y Figueroa – Panegírico y natalicio al marqués de Montalbán
• Henry Vaughan – Silex scintillans

  Births

• June 14 – Carlo Alessandro Guidi, Italian lyric poet
• July – Charles Leslie, Irish theologian
• September 23 – Bishop Jeremy Collier, English theologian and theatre critic
• Unknown dates
• *Madame d'Aulnoy, French writer of fairy tales
• *Henry Scougal, Scottish theologian

  Deaths

• February 11 – René Descartes, French philosopher
• April 22 – Stephanius, Danish royal historiographer
• May 27 – Anthony Ascham, English political theorist
• June – Jean Rotrou, French poet and dramatist
• June 30 – Niccolò Cabeo, Italian philosopher
• August 25 – Richard Crashaw, English poet
• September 17 – Constantino Cajetan, Italian scholar and book collector
• October 25 – Franciscus Quaresmius, Milanese Franciscan writer
• November 13 – Thomas May, English poet and historian
• December 28 – Bartol Kašić, Croatian linguist and grammarian
• Unknown dates
• *Balthazar Baro, French poet, dramatist and romance-writer
• *İbrahim Peçevi, Ottoman historian
• *Tukaram, Hindu poet