1683 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1683.

Events

 * May 17 – Jordaan Luchtmans, the predecessor of Brill Publishers, is registered as a bookseller by the Leiden booksellers' guild.
 * May 25 – Lancelot Addison is appointed Dean of Lichfield.
 * June 26 – Madame de La Fayette is widowed.
 * August/September – John Locke flees to the Netherlands, under suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot in England.
 * November 4 – Marriage of André Dacier and Anne Lefèvre in Paris.
 * December 7 – English parliamentarian Algernon Sidney is executed for treason, based largely on the anti-monarchist views expressed in his Discourses Concerning Government, in manuscript
 * unknown dates
 * John Banks' historical play The Innocent Usurper, about Lady Jane Grey, is banned from the stage by the censors.
 * A public library is first recorded at Kirkwall on Orkney.

Fiction

 * Alexander Oldys (?) – The London Jilt; or, the Politick Whore
 * "Abbé du Prat" (pseudonym) – Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in her Smock (Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise)

Drama

 * Joshua Barnes – Landgartha, or the Amazon Queen of Denmark and Norway
 * Chikamatsu Monzaemon – Yotsugi Soga (The Soga Successors/The Soga Heir)
 * John Crowne – City Politiques
 * John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee – The Duke of Guise
 * Nathaniel Lee – Constantine the Great
 * Thomas Otway – The Atheist
 * Edward Ravenscroft – Dame Dobson
 * Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz – Los empeños de una casa (The Trials of a Noble House)
 * Pedro Calderon de la Barca – El pintor de su deshonra

Poetry

 * Robert Gould – Love Given O'er: Or a Satyr on the Inconstancy of Woman

Non-fiction

 * "R. B." (i. e. Nathaniel Crouch), compiled – Two Journeys to Jerusalem
 * John Dryden – Plutarch (one of the first biographies in the English language)
 * Joseph Moxon – Mechanick Exercises
 * John Pordage – Theologia Mystica
 * Dr. Thomas Sydenham – Tractatus de podagra et hydrope

Births

 * April 3 – Mark Catesby, English naturalist (died 1749)
 * December 27 – Conyers Middleton, English controversialist and cleric (died 1750)

Deaths

 * January 15 – Philip Warwick, English writer and politician (born 1609)
 * March 19 – Thomas Killigrew, English dramatist and manager (born 1612)
 * August – Ralph Josselin, English diarist and Anglican cleric (born 1616)
 * August 24 – John Owen, English theologian (born 1616)
 * October 20 – Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, French novelist and dramatist (born 1640)
 * November 18 – Innokentiy Gizel, Ukrainian historian (born c. 1600)
 * December 15 – Izaak Walton, English writer and biographer (born 1593)