# 1696 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1696.

## Events

* January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
* March 5 – William Penn marries his second wife, Hannah Callowhill.
* September – The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, stages The Female Wits, an anti-feminist satire targeting Mary Pix, Delarivier Manley and Catherine Trotter, the three significant women dramatists of the era. The play is a hit, and runs for three nights straight (unusual in the repertory system of the day).
* November 21 – John Vanbrugh's first play, the comedy The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, a sequel to Love's Last Shift, is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Cibber in the cast.
* unknown date
** The Tuscan poet Vincenzo da Filicaja becomes governor of Volterra.
** Chapbook peddlers in England are required to hold a licence.

## New books
### Fiction

* John Aubrey – Miscellanies
* Philip Ayres – The Revengeful Mistress
* Aphra Behn (died 1689) – The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn
* Charles Leslie – The Snake in the Grass
* Mary Pix – The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (novel)
* John Suckling – The Works of Sir John Suckling
* John Tillotson – The Works of John Tillotson

### Drama

* John Banks – Cyrus the Great, or The Tragedy of Love
* Aphra Behn – The Younger Brother
* Colley Cibber – Love's Last Shift
* Thomas Dilke – The City Lady
* Thomas Doggett – The Country Wake
* Thomas D'Urfey – The Comical History of Don Quixote. The Third Part
* George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne – The She-Gallants
* Joseph Harris – The City Bride; or, The Merry Cuckold (adapted from A Cure for a Cuckold)
* Charles Hopkins – Neglected Virtue
* Delarivier Manley
** The Lost Lover, or The Jealous Husband
** The Royal Mischief
* Peter Anthony Motteux
** Love's a Jest
** She Ventures and He Wins
* Mary Pix
** The Spanish Wives
** Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks
* Edward Ravenscroft – The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor
* Thomas Southerne – Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: a tragedy (adapted from Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko - published)
* John Vanbrugh – The Relapse

### Poetry

* Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate – New Version of the Psalms of David
* John Dryden – An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell (died 1695)
* John Oldmixon – Poems on Several Occasions
* Elizabeth Singer Rowe – Poems on Several Occasions
* Nahum Tate – Miscellanea Sacra; or, Poems on Divine & Moral Subjects

### Non-fiction

* Richard Baxter – Reliquiae Baxterianae (posthumous)
* John Bellers – Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry
* Gerard Croese – The General History of the Quakers (translation)
* Judith Drake (attributed) – An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (anonymous)
* Delarivier Manley – Letters Written by Mrs. Manley
* William Penn – Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers
* John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby – The Character of Charles II, King of England
* John Toland – Christianity not Mysterious
* William Whiston – A New Theory of the Earth

## Births

* July 14 – William Oldys, English antiquary, bibliographer and poet (died 1761)
* September 25 – Madame du Deffand, French literary hostess (died 1780)
* October 13 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English memoirist and courtier (died 1743)
* Unknown date – Matthew Green, English writer of light verse and customs official (died 1737)

## Deaths

* January 3 – Mary Mollineux, English Quaker poet (born c.1651)
* March 14 – Jean Domat, French jurist (born 1625)
* March 18 – Bonaventura Baron, Irish theologian, philosopher and writer in Latin (born 1610)
* April 17 – Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, French author (born 1626)
* April 27 – Simon Foucher, French polemic philosopher (born 1644)
* May 10 – Jean de La Bruyère, French essayist (born 1645)
* June 9 – Antoine Varillas, French historian (born 1626)
* August 9 – Wacław Potocki, Polish nobleman (Szlachta), moralist, Baroque poet and writer (born 1621)
* September 8 – Henry Birkhead, English academic, lawyer, Latin poet and founder of the Oxford Chair of Poetry (born 1617)
* November 26 – Gregório de Matos, Brazilian Baroque poet (born 1636)
* December 31 – Samuel Annesley, English Puritan minister noted for his sermons (born c.1620)
* Unknown dates
** Jón Magnússon, Icelandic writer (born c. 1610)
** Gesshū Sōko (月舟宗胡), Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher, poet and calligrapher (born 1618)