1696 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1696.

Events

 * January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.
 * March 5 – William Penn marries his second wife, Hannah Callowhill.
 * September – The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, stages The Female Wits, an anti-feminist satire targeting Mary Pix, Delarivier Manley and Catherine Trotter, the three significant women dramatists of the era. The play is a hit, and runs for three nights straight (unusual in the repertory system of the day).
 * November 21 – John Vanbrugh's first play, the comedy The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, a sequel to Love's Last Shift, is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Cibber in the cast.
 * unknown date
 * The Tuscan poet Vincenzo da Filicaja becomes governor of Volterra.
 * Chapbook peddlers in England are required to hold a licence.

Fiction

 * John Aubrey – Miscellanies
 * Philip Ayres – The Revengeful Mistress
 * Aphra Behn (died 1689) – The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn
 * Charles Leslie – The Snake in the Grass
 * Mary Pix – The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (novel)
 * John Suckling – The Works of Sir John Suckling
 * John Tillotson – The Works of John Tillotson

Drama

 * John Banks – Cyrus the Great, or The Tragedy of Love
 * Aphra Behn – The Younger Brother
 * Colley Cibber – Love's Last Shift
 * Thomas Dilke – The City Lady
 * Thomas Doggett – The Country Wake
 * Thomas D'Urfey – The Comical History of Don Quixote. The Third Part
 * George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne – The She-Gallants
 * Joseph Harris – The City Bride; or, The Merry Cuckold (adapted from A Cure for a Cuckold)
 * Charles Hopkins – Neglected Virtue
 * Delarivier Manley
 * The Lost Lover, or The Jealous Husband
 * The Royal Mischief
 * Peter Anthony Motteux
 * Love's a Jest
 * She Ventures and He Wins
 * Mary Pix
 * The Spanish Wives
 * Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks
 * Edward Ravenscroft – The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor
 * Thomas Southerne – Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: a tragedy (adapted from Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko - published)
 * John Vanbrugh – The Relapse

Poetry

 * Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate – New Version of the Psalms of David
 * John Dryden – An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell (died 1695)
 * John Oldmixon – Poems on Several Occasions
 * Elizabeth Singer Rowe – Poems on Several Occasions
 * Nahum Tate – Miscellanea Sacra; or, Poems on Divine & Moral Subjects

Non-fiction

 * Richard Baxter – Reliquiae Baxterianae (posthumous)
 * John Bellers – Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry
 * Gerard Croese – The General History of the Quakers (translation)
 * Judith Drake (attributed) – An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (anonymous)
 * Delarivier Manley – Letters Written by Mrs. Manley
 * William Penn – Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers
 * John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby – The Character of Charles II, King of England
 * John Toland – Christianity not Mysterious
 * William Whiston – A New Theory of the Earth

Births

 * July 14 – William Oldys, English antiquary, bibliographer and poet (died 1761)
 * September 25 – Madame du Deffand, French literary hostess (died 1780)
 * October 13 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English memoirist and courtier (died 1743)
 * Unknown date – Matthew Green, English writer of light verse and customs official (died 1737)

Deaths

 * January 3 – Mary Mollineux, English Quaker poet (born c.1651)
 * March 14 – Jean Domat, French jurist (born 1625)
 * March 18 – Bonaventura Baron, Irish theologian, philosopher and writer in Latin (born 1610)
 * April 17 – Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, French author (born 1626)
 * April 27 – Simon Foucher, French polemic philosopher (born 1644)
 * May 10 – Jean de La Bruyère, French essayist (born 1645)
 * June 9 – Antoine Varillas, French historian (born 1626)
 * August 9 – Wacław Potocki, Polish nobleman (Szlachta), moralist, Baroque poet and writer (born 1621)
 * September 8 – Henry Birkhead, English academic, lawyer, Latin poet and founder of the Oxford Chair of Poetry (born 1617)
 * November 26 – Gregório de Matos, Brazilian Baroque poet (born 1636)
 * December 31 – Samuel Annesley, English Puritan minister noted for his sermons (born c.1620)
 * Unknown dates
 * Jón Magnússon, Icelandic writer (born c. 1610)
 * Gesshū Sōko (月舟宗胡), Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher, poet and calligrapher (born 1618)