1683 in literature

Events

• May 17 – Jordaan Luchtmans, the predecessor of Brill Publishers, is registered as a bookseller by the Leiden booksellers' guild.
• May 25 – Lancelot Addison is appointed Dean of Lichfield.
• June 26 – Madame de La Fayette is widowed.
• August/September – John Locke flees to the Netherlands, under suspicion of involvement in the Rye House Plot in England.
• November 4 – Marriage of André Dacier and Anne Lefèvre in Paris.
• unknown dates
• *John Banks' historical play The Innocent Usurper, about Lady Jane Grey, is banned from the stage by the censors.
• *A public library is first recorded at Kirkwall on Orkney.

  New books

Fiction

• Alexander Oldys – The London Jilt; or, the Politick Whore
• "Abbé du Prat" – Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in her Smock

  Drama

• Joshua Barnes – Landgartha, or the Amazon Queen of Denmark and Norway
• Chikamatsu Monzaemon – Yotsugi Soga
• John Crowne – City Politiques
• John Dryden and Nathaniel Lee – The Duke of Guise
• Sor Juana – Los empeños de una casa
• Thomas Otway – The Atheist
• Edward Ravenscroft – Dame Dobson, or the Cunning Woman
• Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz – Los empeños de una casa
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca – El pintor de su deshonra

  Poetry

• Robert Gould – Love Given O'er: Or a Satyr on the Inconstancy of Woman

  Non-fiction

• "R. B.", compiled – Two Journeys to Jerusalem
• John Dryden – Plutarch
• Joseph Moxon – Mechanick Exercises
• John Pordage – Theologia Mystica
• Dr. Thomas Sydenham – Tractatus de podagra et hydrope

  Births

• April 3 – Mark Catesby, English naturalist
• December 27 – Conyers Middleton, English controversialist and cleric

  Deaths

• January 15 – Philip Warwick, English writer and politician
• March 19 – Thomas Killigrew, English dramatist and manager
• August – Ralph Josselin, English diarist and Anglican cleric
• August 24 – John Owen, English theologian
• October 20 – Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, French novelist and dramatist
• November 18 – Innokentiy Gizel, Ukrainian historian
• December 15 – Izaak Walton, English writer and biographer