1684 in literature

The year 1684 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• 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 (1704).
• Pierre Bayle begins his journal of literary criticism, Nouvelles de la république des lettres.
• English novelist and dramatist Mary Griffith marries merchant George Pix.

New books

Fiction

• Aphra Behn - Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
• Ihara Saikaku - The Great Mirror of Beauties

Non-fiction

• Jakob Abbadie - Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne
• Edward Phillips - Enchiridion linguae latinae
• Christopher Sandius - Bibliotheca antitrinitariorum
• George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax - The Character of a Trimmer

Plays

• John Horne - Fortune's Task, or the Fickle Fair One
• John Lacy - Sir Hercules Buffoon
• Simon Neale - The Mistaken Beauty (adapted from Corneille)
• Edward Ravenscroft - Dame Dobson, or the Cunning Woman
• Thomas Southerne - The Disappointment, or the Mother of Fashion

Poetry

• Aphra Behn - Poems upon Several Occasions

Births

• December 3 - Ludvig Holberg (died 1754)

Deaths

• April 1 - Roger Williams, theologian (born 1603)
• October 1 - Pierre Corneille, dramatist (born 1606)
• December 7 - John Oldham, poet (born 1653)