1651 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1651.

Events

 * August 22 – Execution on Tower Hill in London of Welsh Protestant preacher Christopher Love

Prose

 * Noah Biggs – Chymiatrophilos, Matæotechnia medicinæ praxeōs, The vanity of the Craft of Physick, or, A new dispensator
 * William Bosworth – The Chaste and Lost Lovers
 * Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery – Parthenissa (first section)
 * Mary Cary (Rande) – The Little Horn's Doom and Downfall and A New and More Exact Map of the New Jerusalem's Glory
 * Marin le Roy de Gomberville – Jeune Alcidiane
 * Francisco de Quevedo – Virtud militante contra las cuatro pestes del mundo y cuatro fantasmas de la vida
 * Baltasar Gracián – El Criticón (first part)
 * Thomas Hobbes – Leviathan, or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
 * John Milton – Defensio pro Populo Anglicano
 * Paul Scarron – Roman comique (Comic romance, first part)
 * Filip Stanislavov – Abagar (first printed book in modern Bulgarian)
 * Anna Weamys – A Continuation of Sir Philip Sydney's Arcadia
 * Sir Henry Wotton (posthumous) – Reliquiæ Wottonianæ; or, a collection of lives, letters, poems; with characters of sundry personages: and other incomparable pieces of language and art "By the curious pensil of the ever memorable Sr Henry Wotton Kt, late, provost of Eton Colledg"

Drama

 * William Cartwright
 * The Lady Errant
 * The Ordinary
 * The Siege, or Love's Convert
 * Comedies, Tragi-Comedies, with Other Poems
 * Pedro Calderon de la Barca – El alcalde de Zalamea
 * Jerónimo de Cáncer – Obras varias
 * Francisco López de Zárate – Hercules furente y oeta
 * Juan de Matos Fragoso – La defensa de la Fè, y Principe prodigioso
 * Thomas Randolph (attributed to) – Hey for Honesty, Down with Knavery (adapted from Aristophanes' Plutus)
 * Jerónimo de Cáncer – Vejamen
 * Leonard Willan – Astraea, or True Love's Mirror (adapted from Honoré D'Urfé's L'Astrée)

Poetry

 * William Davenant – Gondibert (second impression)
 * Francisco de Borja y Aragón – Nápoles recuperada
 * Manuel de Salinas y Lizana – La casta Susana, paráfrasis poética de su sagrada historia
 * Francisco de Trillo y Figueroa – Neapolisea
 * Henry Vaughan – Olor Iscanus (Swan of Usk)

Births

 * April 6 – André Dacier, French classicist (died 1722)
 * August 6 – François Fénelon, French theologian (died 1715)
 * October 24 – Jean de La Chapelle, French dramatist (died 1723)
 * November 12 – Juana Inés de la Cruz (Sor Juana), Mexican poet (died 1695)

Deaths

 * January 29 – Diego de Colmenares, Spanish historian (born 1586)
 * February 14 – Jean Roberti, Flemish theologian (born 1569)
 * April – Elizabeth Richardson, 1st Lady Cramond, English women's writer (born c. 1576)
 * October 7 – Jacques Sirmond, French scholar (born 1559)
 * December 14 – Pierre Dupuy, French scholar (born 1582)
 * December 22 – Arnold Johan Messenius, Swedish royal historiographer (born 1607/1608)
 * Unknown dates
 * Adho Duraso, Rajasthani poet (born c. 1550)
 * Henry Rice, Welsh courtier and writer (born c. 1585)