1684 in literature

Events

• June 25 – The death of Robert Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow, gives rise to establishment of the Leighton Library at Dunblane, the oldest surviving public subscription library in Scotland.
• July 25 – The English novelist and dramatist Mary Griffith marries merchant George Pix.
• November 11 – The English dramatist Nathaniel Lee is admitted to Bedlam Hospital for the insane.
• unknown dates
• *The Protestant Academy of Saumur is closed down by King Louis XIV of France.
• *John Banks' historical play The Island Queens, or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland is banned from the stage; it is produced as The Albion Queens twenty years later.
• *Pierre Bayle begins his journal of literary criticism, Nouvelles de la république des lettres.

  New books

Fiction

• Aphra Behn – Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
• John Bunyan – The Pilgrim's Progress, Second Part
• Giovanni Paolo Marana – Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy
• Ihara Saikaku – The Great Mirror of Beauties

  Drama

• Jean de La Chapelle – Ajax
• John Horne – Fortune's Task, or the Fickle Fair One
• John Lacy – Sir Hercules Buffoon
• Simon Neale – The Mistaken Beauty
• John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester – Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery
• Thomas Southerne – The Disappointment, or the Mother of Fashion
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca
• *Los cabellos de Absalón
• *Guárdate del agua mansa

  Poetry

• Aphra Behn – Poems upon Several Occasions
• Pavao Ritter Vitezović – Odiljenje sigetsko

  Non-fiction

• Jakob Abbadie – Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne
• Dorcas Dole – Once More a Warning to Thee, O England, but more particularly to the inhabitants of the city of Bristol
• Edward Phillips – Enchiridion linguae latinae
• Christian Knorr von Rosenroth – Kabbala Denudata
• Christopher Sandius – Bibliotheca antitrinitariorum
• George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax – The Character of a Trimmer
• Antonio de Solís y Rivadeneyra – Historia de la conquista de México

  Births

• February 21 – Justus van Effen, Dutch journalist writing also in French
• October 16 – Peter Walkden, English diarist
• December 3 – Ludvig Holberg, Danish/Norwegian essayist, philosopher and playwright

  Deaths

• April 1 – Roger Williams, English-born American theologian
• October 1 – Pierre Corneille, French dramatist
• December 7 – John Oldham, English satirical poet and translator
• Unknown date – Francisco de Avellaneda, Spanish dramatist and poet