1631 in literature

This article is a summary of the literary events and publications of 1631.

Events

January 9 – Love's Triumph Through Callipolis, a masque written by Ben Jonson and designed by Inigo Jones, is staged at Whitehall Palace.
January 11 – The Master of the Revels in England refuses to license Philip Massinger's new play, Believe as You List, because of its seditious content; it is first performed in a revised version on May 7.
February 5 – Puritan minister and theologian Roger Williams emigrates from England to Boston in the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
February 22 – Chloridia, the year's second Jonson/Jones masque, is performed.
June 10 – The King's Men perform Pericles, Prince of Tyre at the Globe Theatre.
The young Blaise Pascal moves with his family to Paris.
Thomas Hobbes is employed as a tutor by the Cavendish family, to teach the future Earl of Devonshire.
Publication of the "Wicked Bible" by Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the royal printers in London, an edition of the King James Version of the Bible in which a typesetting erratum leaves the seventh of the Ten Commandments with the word not omitted from the sentence "Thou shalt not commit adultery". Copies are withdrawn and about a year later the publishers are called to the Star Chamber, fined £300 and have their licence to print revoked.

Johann Philipp Abelin – Arma Suecica, volume 1
Moses Amyraut – Traité des religions
Collected works of Jacobus Arminius published posthumously in Frankfurt
Robert Fludd – Medicina Catholica
Thomas Harriot – Artis analyticae praxis
James Mabbe – Celestina, or the Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea, a 300-page closet drama or "novel in dialogue," translated from the Spanish-language original of Fernando de Rojas, La Celestina
Wicked Bible, a reprint of the King James Bible notable for typographical errors
William Oughtred – ''Clavis mathematicae''

January 1 – Katharine Philips, English poet
February 22 – Peder Syv, Danish philologist, folklorist and priest
March 16 – René Le Bossu, French critic
April – John Phillips, English satirist and nephew of John Milton
July 15 – Richard Cumberland, English philosopher
August 9 – John Dryden, English poet and dramatist
October 18 – Michael Wigglesworth, English-born American poet and minister
Unknown date – John Barret, English religious writer and Presbyterian minister

February 7 – Gabriel Harvey, English poet and author
March 31 – John Donne, English poet and Dean of St Paul's
May 6 – Robert Bruce Cotton, English antiquary and founder of Cotton Library
May 25 – Samuel Harsnett, English religious writer and archbishop
May 26 – Enrico Caterino Davila, Italian historian, murdered
July 28 – Guillén de Castro y Bellvis, Spanish dramatist
September 22 – Cardinal Federico Borromeo, Italian archbishop and founder of Biblioteca Ambrosiana
October 26
*Lewis Bayly, Welsh or Scottish-born religious writer and bishop writing in English
*Catherine de Parthenay, Viscountess and Princess of Rohan, French Huguenot noblewoman, mathematician, poet, playwright and translator
November 29 – Edmond Richer, French theologian
December 23 – Michael Drayton, English poet