1656 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1656.

Events

April 25 – In London, the Council of State, usually busy with larger matters, has taken on the censorship of individual books and orders Robert Tichborne, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, to burn a volume entitled Sportive Wit, or the Muses' Merriment for its "scandalous, lascivious, scurrilous, and profane matter".
May 9 – Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets is ordered to be destroyed by Britain's Council of State.
May – The Siege of Rhodes, Part I, by Sir William Davenant, the "first English opera", is performed in a private theatre at his home, Rutland House, in the City of London. This includes the innovative use of painted backdrops and the appearance of England's first professional actress, Mrs. Coleman as Ianthe.
July 27 – Baruch Spinoza is excluded from the Jewish religious community in Amsterdam.
November 12 – John Milton marries Katherine Woodcock at St Mary Aldermanbury, London.
unknown date – Two playbooks of old plays published in London in this year, The Careless Shepherdess and The Old Law, contain the first "play lists" or catalogs of published dramas ever issued in England.

Cyrano de Bergerac – Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon
Thomas Blount – Glossographia; or, a dictionary interpreting the hard words of whatsoever language now used in our refined English tongue
Méric Casaubon – A Treatise Concerning Enthusiasm
Margaret Cavendish
*A True Relation of my Birth, Breeding, and Life
*Nature's Pictures
William Dugdale – Antiquities of Warwickshire
James Harrington – The Commonwealth of Oceana
Thomas Hobbes – Questions concerning Liberty, Necessity and Chance
Michael Maier – Themis aurea: the Laws of the Fraternity of the Rosie Crosse
Marchamont Nedham – The Excellency of a Free State
Adam Olearius – Vermehrte Newe Beschreibung Der Muscowitischen und Persischen Reyse So durch gelegenheit einer Holsteinischen Gesandtschaft an den Russischen Zaar und König in Persien geschehen
Francis Osborne – Advice to a Son
Blaise Pascal – Lettres provinciales
John Tradescant the Younger – Musæum Tradescantianum; or, a collection of rarities preserved at South-Lambeth neer London
Gerrard Winstanley – ''The Law of Freedom''