1672 in literature

Events from the year 1672 in literature.

Events

 * January 25 – London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, is destroyed by fire. The King's Company moves to the theatre at Lincoln's Inn Fields, which the rival Duke's Company left the previous year.
 * June – Thomas Killigrew mounts another all-female production of his The Parson's Wedding with the King's Company. (The first occurred in 1664.) Beaumont and Fletcher's Philaster and Dryden's The Maiden Queen are also staged with all-women casts and new prologues by Dryden for the productions.
 * September 13 – John Bunyan is released after twelve years' imprisonment for preaching without a licence.
 * December – John Dryden's play Marriage à la Mode is first performed in London by the King's Company.
 * The Mercure de France is first published, under the title Mercure galant.

Prose

 * Nicolás Antonio – Bibliotheca Hispana Nova
 * Nicolas Denys – Description Géographique et Historique des Costes de l’Amérique Septentrionale (Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America)
 * Richard Cumberland – De legibus naturae (On natural laws)
 * Melchor Fuster – Conceptos predicables
 * Gadla Walatta Petros (Ethiopian hagiography in Ge'ez language)
 * Nathaniel Hodges – Loimologia
 * James Janeway – A Token for Children, Part 2
 * John Milton – Art of Logic
 * Pierre Nicole – A Discourse Against Plays and Romances
 * César Vichard de Saint-Réal – Dom Carlos

Drama

 * Anonymous – Emilia (adapted from the Costanza di Rosamondo of Aurelio Aureli)
 * Anonymous – The Illustrious Slaves
 * Pedro Calderon de la Barca
 * Eco y Narciso
 * El hijo del sol, Faetón
 * La niña de Gómez Arias
 * Thomas Corneille – Ariane
 * John Dryden
 * The Assignation
 * Marriage à la mode (first performed; published the following year)
 * John Lacy (published)
 * The Dumb Lady, or The Farrier Made Physician
 * The Old Troop, or Monsier Ragou
 * Molière – Les Femmes Savantes
 * Henry Nevil Payne – The Morning Ramble
 * Jean Racine – Bajazet
 * Edward Ravenscroft – The Citizen Turned Gentleman
 * Thomas Shadwell
 * Epsom Wells
 * The Miser
 * George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, and others – The Rehearsal (published)

Poetry

 * Miguel de Barrios – El coro de las musas

Births

 * January 18 – Antoine Houdar de la Motte, French writer, (died 1731)
 * March – Sir Richard Steele, Irish dramatist, satirist and politician (died 1729)
 * May 1 – Joseph Addison, English essayist, poet and politician (died 1719)
 * August 2 – Johann Jakob Scheuchzer, Swiss paleontologist, historian and travel writer (died 1733)
 * October 27 – Maria Gustava Gyllenstierna, Swedish writer (died 1737)

Deaths

 * June 14 – Matthew Wren, English scholar and cleric (born 1629)
 * June 20 – Alonso Andrada, Spanish biographer and ascetic writer (born 1590)
 * September 12 – Tanneguy Le Fèvre, French classicist (born 1615)
 * September 16 – Anne Bradstreet, pioneering American female author (born c. 1612)
 * November 21 – Robert Creighton, Scottish classicist, politician and bishop (born 1593)
 * December 27 – Jacques Rohault, French philosopher (born 1618)