1651 in literature

Events

• August 22 – Execution on Tower Hill in London of Welsh Protestant preacher Christopher Love

  New books

Prose

• Noah Biggs – Chymiatrophilos, Matæotechnia medicinæ praxeōs, The vanity of the Craft of Physick, or, A new dispensator
• William Bosworth – The Chaste and Lost Lovers
• Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery – Parthenissa
• Mary Cary – The Little Horn's Doom and Downfall and A New and More Exact Map of the New Jerusalem's Glory
• Marin le Roy de Gomberville – Jeune Alcidiane
• Francisco de Quevedo – Virtud militante contra las cuatro pestes del mundo y cuatro fantasmas de la vida
• Baltasar Gracián – El Criticón
• Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
• John Milton – Defensio pro Populo Anglicano
• Paul Scarron – Roman comique
• Filip Stanislavov – Abagar
• Anna Weamys – A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia
• Sir Henry Wotton – Reliquiæ Wottonianæ; or, a collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art "By the curious pensil of the ever memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, late, provost of Eton Colledg"

  Drama

• William Cartwright
• *The Lady Errant
• *The Ordinary
• *The Siege, or Love's Convert
• *Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with Other Poems
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca – El alcalde de Zalamea
• Jerónimo de Cáncer – Obras varias
• Francisco López de Zárate – Hercules furente y oeta
• Juan de Matos Fragoso – La defensa de la Fè, y Principe prodigioso
• Thomas Randolph – Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery
• Jerónimo de Cáncer – Vejamen
• Leonard Willan – Astraea, or True Love's Mirror

  Poetry

• William Davenant – Gondibert
• Francisco de Borja y Aragón – Nápoles recuperada
• Manuel de Salinas y Lizana – La casta Susana, paráfrasis poética de su sagrada historia
• Francisco de Trillo y Figueroa – Neapolisea
• Henry Vaughan – Olor Iscanus

  Births

• April 6 – André Dacier, French classicist
• August 6 – François Fénelon, French theologian
• October 24 – Jean de La Chapelle, French dramatist
• November 12 – Juana Inés de la Cruz, Mexican poet

  Deaths

• January 29 – Diego de Colmenares, Spanish historian
• February 14 – Jean Roberti, Flemish theologian
• April – Elizabeth Richardson, 1st Lady Cramond, English women's writer
• October 7 – Jacques Sirmond, French scholar
• December 14 – Pierre Dupuy, French scholar
• December 22 – Arnold Johan Messenius, Swedish royal historiographer
• Unknown dates
• *Adho Duraso, Rajasthani poet
• *Henry Rice, Welsh courtier and writer