1676 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1676.

Events

 * March 2 – George Etherege's play The Man of Mode is given its first performance, in London.
 * May 22 – Samuel Pepys is elected Master of Trinity House.
 * December 11 – The first performance of William Wycherley's play The Plain Dealer is given in London.
 * December – The German mathematician and philosopher Gottfried Leibniz arrives in Hanover to take up a post as "councillor" and librarian to Johann Friedrich, Duke of Brunswick-Calenberg.

Prose

 * Robert Barclay – Theses Theologiae
 * Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery – English-Adventures by a Person of Honor
 * Charles Cotton – Cotton's Angler (a continuation of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler)
 * Ann, Lady Fanshawe – Memoir (of her deceased courtier husband, Sir Richard Fanshawe, 1st Baronet)
 * Domingo Fernández Navarrete – Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China (An Account of the Empire of China, Historical, Political, Moral, and Religious)
 * Gabriel de Foigny – La Terre Australe connue (The Southern Land, Known)
 * Thomas Tomkinson – Truth's Triumph. A book on Muggletonianism.
 * Izaak Walton – The Compleat Angler, 5th edition

Drama

 * Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery (?) – Zoroastres
 * John Crowne –The Country Wit
 * Thomas Duffet – Beauty's Triumph (masque)
 * Thomas d'Urfey
 * The Fool Turned Critic
 * Madam Fickle
 * George Etherege – The Man of Mode
 * Nathaniel Lee – Gloriana, or the Court of Augustus Caesar
 * Thomas Otway – Don Carlos, Prince of Spain
 * Edward Ravenscroft – The Wrangling Lovers
 * Thomas Rawlins – Tom Essence
 * Elkanah Settle
 * Pastor Fido
 * The Conquest of China by the Tartars
 * Ibrahim, the Illustrious Bassa (adapted from a story by Madeleine de Scudéry)
 * Thomas Shadwell
 * The Libertine
 * The Virtuoso
 * William Wycherley – The Plain Dealer
 * Agustín Moreto
 * El lindo don Diego
 * No puede ser...
 * El parecido en la corte
 * Verdadera III parte de comedias

Births

 * June 21 – Anthony Collins, English philosopher (died 1729)
 * July 4 – José de Cañizares, Spanish dramatist (died 1750)
 * October 8 – Benito Jerónimo Feijóo y Montenegro, Spanish scholar and monk (died 1764)
 * Unknown dates
 * Péter Apor, Hungarian historian writing in Latin (died 1752)
 * Samuel Bownas, English Quaker religious writer (died 1753)
 * William Gwavas, English lawyer and writer in the Cornish language (died 1741)

Deaths

 * March 22 – Lady Anne Clifford, English patron and correspondent (born 1590)
 * July 25 – François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac, French writer and cleric (born 1604)
 * August 17 – Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen, German writer (born 1621)
 * September 2 – Edward Worsley, English religious writer (born 1605)
 * October 25 – Justus Georg Schottel, German grammarian (born 1612)
 * November 1 – Gisbertus Voetius, Dutch theologian (born 1589)
 * December 18 – Edward Benlowes, English poet (born 1603)
 * December 25 – William Cavendish, 1st Duke of Newcastle, English polymath (born 1592)