This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1639.

Events

• c. January – The first printing press in British North America is launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Stephen Daye.
• February 14 – French writers Jacques Esprit and François de La Mothe Le Vayer are elected to the Académie française.
• May 21 – The King's Men act John Fletcher's The Mad Lover in London.
• December – Blaise Pascal's family move to Rouen.^[1]
• December 7 – Francisco de Quevedo is arrested and imprisoned at León, Spain.^[2]
• unknown dates
  • Simon Dach becomes professor of poetry at the University of Königsberg.
  • Archbishop William Laud donates the manuscript of the Peterborough Chronicle to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
  • Thomas Heywood writes Londini Status Pacatus, the Lord Mayor of the City of London's annual pageant.^[3] It will be the last such in London for 15 years, due to the English Civil War, but will resume under the Commonwealth.

New books

Prose

• Jean du Vergier de Hauranne – Théologie familière, ou Instruction de ce que le Chrétien doit croire et faire en cette vie pour être sauvé
• Francisco de Quevedo – La isla de los monopantos
• Jan Marek Marci – De proportione motus seu regula sphygmica
• Friedrich Spanheim – Commentaire historique de la vie et de la mort de . . Christofle Vicomte de Dohna
• Henry Spelman (ed.) – Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in re Ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (3 vols, containing many forgeries)^[4]

Drama

• Lodowick Carlell – Arviragus and Philicia, Parts 1 and 2 (published)
• George Chapman and James Shirley – The Tragedy of Chabot (published)
• Aston Cockayne – A Masque at Bretbie
• Pierre Corneille – L'Illusion comique, (published)
• T. D. (authorship disputed) – The Bloody Banquet (published)
• William Davenant – The Spanish Lovers
• Robert Davenport – A New Trick to Cheat the Devil (published)
• John Fletcher (posthumously)
  • Monsieur Thomas (published)
  • Wit Without Money (published)
• Henry Glapthorne
  • Argalus and Parthenia (published)
  • Albertus Wallenstein (published)
• Sir William Lower – The Phoenix in Her Flames
• Philip Massinger – The Unnatural Combat published
• Jasper Mayne – The City Match
• James Shirley
  • The Politician (performed)
  • The Ball
  • The Maid's Revenge
  • The Changes, or Love in a Maze (published)
• Sir John Suckling – Brennoralt, or the Discontented Colonel

Poetry

• Richard Corbet – Certain Elegant Poems
• John Clarke – Paroemiologia ("Early to bed and early to rise...")
• Henry Glapthorne – Poems, including a series addressed to "Lucinda"
• Francis Quarles – Memorials Upon the Death of Sir Robert Quarles, Knight

Births

• February 6 – Daniel Georg Morhof, German critic (died 1691)
• December 22 – Jean Racine, French dramatist (died 1699)
• unknown dates
  • Thomas Ellwood, English religious writer (died 1713)
  • César Vichard de Saint-Réal, French novelist (died 1692)
• probable – Charles Sedley, English wit and dramatist (died 1701)

Deaths

• January – Shackerley Marmion, English dramatist (born 1603)^[5]
• January 23 – Francisco Maldonado de Silva, Argentinian poet (burned at stake, born 1592)
• May 21 – Tommaso Campanella, Italian poet and theologian (born 1568)
• August 4 – Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, New Spanish dramatist (born c. 1581)
• August 20 – Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (born 1597)
• October – Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, English poet, translator and dramatist (born 1585)
• November 26 – John Spottiswoode, Scottish historian (born 1565)^[6]
• Possible date – John Ford, English dramatist and poet (born 1586)