1655 in literature

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The year 1655 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• May - Jeremy Taylor is imprisoned for four months at Chepstow Castle.
• August 6 - The Blackfriars Theatre is demolished.
• October 29 - To celebrate Lord Mayor's Day, Edmund Gayton's pageant Charity Triumphant or the Virgin Show is staged in London; it is the first City pageant in fifteen years.
• Thomas Stanley begins his History of Philosophy.

New books

• John Bramhall - Defense of True Liberty; Bramhall, an Anglican divine, begins a correspondence of treatises with Thomas Hobbes
• Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle - The World's Olio
• Thomas Fuller - The Church History of Britain
• John Heydon - Eugenius Theodidacticus
• William Prynne - A New Discovery of Free-State Tyranny
• Sir William Sales - Theophania
• John Wallis - Elenchus geomeiriae Hobbianae, an attack on the work of Thomas Hobbes
• Izaak Walton - The Compleat Angler, second edition

Published plays

• Anonymous - The Gossips' Brawl, or the Women Wear the Breeches
• Antony Brewer - The Lovesick King
• Lodowick Carlell - The Passionate Lovers, Parts 1 and 2
• Robert Daborne - The Poor Man's Comfort
• Robert Davenport - King John and Matilda
• Thomas Heywood & William Rowley - Fortune by Land and Sea
• Sir William Lower - Polyeuctes, or the Martyr
• Philip Massinger - Three New Plays, a collection that included The Guardian, The Bashful Lover, and (with John Fletcher) A Very Woman
• William Rider - The Twins
• James Shirley - The Gentleman of Venice and The Politician
• Jeremy Taylor - Golden Grove; or a Manuall of daily prayers and letanies . .

Poetry

• Henry Vaughan - Silex Scintillans (part 2)

Births

• January 1 - Christian Thomasius, philosopher (born 1728)

Deaths

• February 25 - Daniel Heinsius, poet (born 1580)
• July 28 - Cyrano de Bergerac, dramatist, himself the subject of a famous play by Edmond Rostand (born 1619)
• September 7 - François Tristan l'Hermite, dramatist (born c. 1601)
• October 24 - Pierre Gassendi, philosopher (born 1592)