1683 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1683.

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.
December 7 – English parliamentarian Algernon Sidney is executed for treason, based largely on the anti-monarchist views expressed in his Discourses Concerning Government, in manuscript
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.

Alexander Oldys (?) – The London Jilt; or, the Politick Whore
"Abbé du Prat" (pseudonym) – Venus in the Cloister; or, The Nun in her Smock (Vénus dans le cloître, ou la Religieuse en chemise)

Joshua Barnes – Landgartha, or the Amazon Queen of Denmark and Norway
Chikamatsu Monzaemon – Yotsugi Soga (The Soga Successors/The Soga Heir)
John Crowne – City Politiques
August 24 – John Owen, English theologian (born 1616)
October 20 – Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, French novelist and dramatist (born 1640)
November 18 – Innokentiy Gizel, Ukrainian historian (born c. 1600)
December 15 – Izaak Walton, English writer and biographer (born 1593)