1654 in literature

Events

• July – Lady Dorothy Osborne plays the leading role in a country-house staging of Sir William Berkeley's tragicomedy The Lost Lady. While the London theatres remain closed, amateur theatricals continue at private houses in England. Like performances of courtly masques before 1642, many of these performances feature women, foreshadowing the acceptance of professional women performers in the early Restoration era.

  New books

Prose

• Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery – Parlhenissa, a novel
• Martino Martini – De Bello Tartarico Historia
• John Milton – Defensio Secunda
• Richard Sherlock – The Quaker's Wilde Questions objected against the Ministers of the Gospel.

  Drama

• Anonymous – Alphonsus Emperor of Germany published
• Alexander Brome – The Cunning Lovers
• Richard Flecknoe – Love's Dominion
• Henry Glapthorne – Revenge for Honour published
• James Howell – The Nuptials of Peleus and Thetis
• Thomas Jordan – Cupid His Coronation
• Thomas May – Two Tragedies, viz. Cleopatra and Agrippina
• Robert Mead – The Combat of Love and Friendship
• John Webster – Appius and Virginia
• Álvaro Cubillo de Aragón
• *El invisible príncipe del Baúl
• *Las muñecas de Marcela
• *El señor de Noches Buenas
• Agustín Moreto
• *De fuera vendrá quien de casa te echará
• *El desdén, con el desdén
• Cyrano de Bergerac – Le Pédant joué
• Philippe Quinault – L'Amant indiscret
• Joost van den Vondel – Lucifer

  Poetry

• Thomas Washbourne – Divine Poems

  Births

• January 10 – Joshua Barnes, English scholar and fiction writer
• January 22 – Richard Blackmore, English poet and physician
• March – Anne Lefèvre, French scholar and translator
• March 16 – Andreas Acoluthus, German Orientalist
• June 24 – Thomas Fuller, English writer and physician
• Unknown dates
• *John Bellers, English writer and Quaker
• *Gerrit van Spaan, Dutch writer

  Deaths

• February 18 – Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, French essayist
• February 19 – Edmund Chilmead, English writer and translator
• April 5 – Jacobus Trigland, Dutch theologian
• October – John Bastwick, English physician and controversialist
• November 30
• *William Habington, English poet
• *John Selden, English polymath
• December – Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Ancram, Scottish nobleman and writer
• Unknown dates
• *Walter Blith, English writer on husbandry
• *Edward Misselden, English mercantilist writer
• *Alexander Ross, Scottish controversialist