1642 in literature

	1633; 1634; 1635; 1636; 1637; 1638; ; 1639; 1640; 1641; 1642; 1643; 1644; 1645; ; 1646; 1647; 1648; 1649; 1650; 1651;
	Art; Archaeology; Architecture; Literature; Music; Philosophy;

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1642.

Events

May – The 35-year-old John Milton marries the teenage Mary Powell. A few weeks later she leaves him in London and returns to her family in Oxfordshire.^[1]
May/June – English Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace is incarcerated in the Gatehouse Prison, Westminster for defying Parliament. During his time there he may be writing "To Althea, from Prison".^[2]
September 2 – The theatres in London are closed by the Puritan government; the "lascivious mirth and levity" of stage plays are to "cease and be forborn" for the next 18 years, during the English Civil War and the Interregnum. Richard Brome's A Jovial Crew is reportedly staged on the final day, making it the last to be performed in the era of English Renaissance theatre.

Thomas Browne – Religio Medici
Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède – Cassandre
Thomas Fuller – The Holy State and the Profane State
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft – Nederduytsche Historiën (History of the Netherlands, publication begins)
Sir Walter Ralegh – The Prince, or Maxims of State
Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – La garduña de Sevilla y anzuelo de las bolsas
Tohfatu'l-Ahbab, a Farsi work by Muhammad Ali Kashmiri^[3]

John Denham – Cooper's Hill, the first example in English of a poem devoted to local description, in this case the Thames scenery around the author's home at Egham in Surrey
Richard Lovelace – "To Althea, from Prison"
Alonso de Castillo Solórzano – Academias morales de las musas

March 15 (baptised) – Laurence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester, English politician and writer (died 1711)
April 21 – Simon de la Loubère, French diplomat, writer, mathematician and poet (died 1729)
April 30 – Christian Weise, German dramatist and poet (died 1708)^[4]
December 30 – Vincenzo da Filicaja, Florentine poet (died 1707)
Unknown dates
Josep Romaguera, Catalan author (died 1723)
- Ihara Saikaku (井原西鶴), Japanese poet and creator of the ukiyozōshi (floating world) genre of prose (died 1693)
- James Tyrrell, English political philosopher (died 1718)
Probable year of birth
- Thomas Shadwell, English dramatist (died 1698)
- Edward Taylor, English-born colonial American poet and author (died 1729)

May 14 – Nicolas Ysambert, French theologian (born c. 1565)
June 1 – Sir John Suckling, English poet (born 1609)
July 5 – Festus Hommius, Dutch Calvinist theologian (born 1576)^[5]
Unknown dates
- Abdul-Haqq Dehlavi, Indian Islamic scholar and writer (born 1551)
- Sir Francis Kynaston, English poet (born 1587)
- James Mabbe, English scholar, poet and translator (born 1572)

^ Campbell, Gordon (2004). "Milton, John (1608–1674)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/18800. Retrieved 2013-10-25. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
^ Wood, Anthony. Athenæ Oxonienses.
^ Muḥammad, A. K., & Pandit, K. N. (2009). A Muslim missionary in mediaeval Kashmir: Being the English translation of Tohfatu'l-ahbab. New Delhi: Voice of India.
^ Nathan Haskell Dole (December 2003). The Bibliophile Dictionary: A Biographical Record of the Great Authors. The Minerva Group, Inc. pp. 577–. ISBN 978-1-4102-1040-1.
^ Anthony a Wood (1967). Athen Oxonienses: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops who Have Had Their Education in the University of Oxford. B. Franklin. p. 1620.