1660 in literature

The year 1660 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• January 1 - Samuel Pepys starts his diary.
• February - John Rhodes reopens the old Cockpit Theatre in London, forms a company of young actors and begins to stage plays. His production of Pericles will be the first Shakespearean performance of the Restoration era; Thomas Betterton makes his stage debut in the title rôle.
• May - The English Restoration: a host of royalist exiles return to England; Richard Baxter is among them.
• August 21 - King Charles II of England issues a royal grant for two theatre companies: a King's Company under his own patronage, led by Thomas Killigrew, and a Duke's Company under the patronage of his brother, the Duke of York and future King James II, led by Sir William Davenant. On 8 November, the King's Company moves from the old Red Bull Theatre to the new Vere St. Theatre.
• September 5 - Roger Boyle receives the title of Earl of Orrery.
• December 8 - First actress to appear on the professional stage in England, as Desdemona in Othello, variously considered to be Margaret Hughes, Anne Marshall or Katherine Corey.^[1][2][3]
• The Klencke Atlas is commissioned by Dutch merchants as a gift to King Charles II of England; it remains to this day the world's largest book ever made.
• Blaise Pascal's Lettres Provinciales is burned as a heretical work on the orders of King Louis XIV of France.

New books

• Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux - Satires
• John Dryden - Astraea Redux
• Richard Flecknoe - Heroick Portraits
• John Milton - The Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth
• Thomas Plowden, S.J. (trans.) - The Learned Man Defended and Reform'd (Daniello Bartoli's L'huomo di lettere)
• Jeremy Taylor - Ductor Dubitantium, or the Rule of Conscience

New drama

• Anonymous (mis-attributed to James Shirley) - Andromana published
• Anonymous - Cromwell's Conspiracy
• Anonymous (mis-attributed to Beaumont and Fletcher) - The Faithful Friends registered
• Thomas Ford - Love's Labyrinth, or the Royal Shepherdess published
• William Lower - The Amorous Fantasm (adapted from Philippe Quinault's Le Fantôme Amoreux)
• Molière - Sganarelle, ou le Cocu imaginaire
• John Tatham - London's Glory staged at the Guildhall, July 5; The Rump published

Poetry

• Rachel Jevon - Exultationis Carmen
• Robert Wild - Iter Boreale

Births

• January - Pierre Helyot (died 1716)
• March 28 - Arnold Houbraken, writer and painter (died 1719)
• September - Daniel Defoe (died 1731)
• date unknown
  • Edward Lhuyd, naturalist, botanist, linguist, geographer and antiquary (died 1709)
  • Thomas Southerne, dramatist (died 1749)

Deaths

• April 30 - Petrus Scriverius, Dutch scholar and writer (born 1576)
• October 6 - Paul Scarron, dramatist and novelist (born c. 1610)
• December 31 - Thomas Powell, clergyman and writer (born c. 1608)
• date unknown - Sir Thomas Urquhart (born 1611)

References