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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1690.

Events

  • December 10 – Playwright Henry Nevil Payne is tortured for his role in the Montgomery Plot to restore James II to the throne — the last time a political prisoner is subjected to torture in Britain.
  • Colley Cibber becomes an actor with the Drury Lane company.

New books

Prose

  • Nicholas Barbon – A Discourse of Trade
  • Pierre Bayle (attributed) – Avis important aux réfugiés
  • Sir Thomas Browne (posthumously) – A Letter to a Friend
  • Antoine Furetière (posthumously) – Dictionnaire universel
  • John Locke
  • An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (dated this year but published 1689)
  • Two Treatises of Government
  • Samuel Pepys – Memoires of the Navy
  • Baro Urbigerus – Aphorismi Urbigerani

Drama

  • John Bancroft – King Edward III, with the Fall of Mortimer, Earl of March
  • Aphra Behn (posthumously) – The Widow Ranter
  • Thomas Betterton – The Prophetess, or The History of Dioclesian (adapted from Fletcher and Massinger's The Prophetess, with music by Henry Purcell)
  • Edmé Boursault – Esope à la ville
  • Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery – Mr. Anthony
  • John Crowne – The English Friar
  • John Dryden
  • Amphitryon, or the Two Sosias
  • Don Sebastian
  • William Mountfort – The Successful Strangers
  • George Powell
  • Alphonso, King of Naples
  • The Treacherous Brothers
  • Elkanah Settle – Distress'd Innocence, or The Princess of Persia
  • Thomas Shadwell – The Scourers
  • Thomas Southerne – Sir Anthony Love
  • "W. C." – The Rape Reveng'd, or the Spanish Revolution (adapted from William Rowley's All's Lost by Lust)

Poetry

  • Thomas D'Urfey:
  • Collin's Walk Through London and Westminster
  • New Poems
  • See also 1690 in poetry
  • Antonio Hurtado de Mendoza – Obras líricas y cómicas, divinas y humanas

Births

  • February 3 – Richard Rawlinson, English antiquary and cleric (died 1755)
  • September 12 – Peter Dens, Netherlandish theologian (died 1775)
  • 1689/90 – Susanna Highmore, English poet (died 1750)

Deaths

  • March 21 – Henry Teonge, English diarist and cleric (born 1621)
  • May 5 – Theodore Haak, German-born English translator and natural philosopher (born 1605)
  • May 12 – John Rushworth, English author of Historical Collections (born c. 1612)
  • October 3 – Robert Barclay, Scottish Quaker writer (born c. 1648)
  • October 25 – Cornelius Hazart, Dutch Jesuit controversialist (born 1617)
  • Unknown date – Franciscus Plante, Dutch poet (born 1613)
  • Probable year of death – Jeremias Felbinger, German writer, teacher and lexicographer (born 1616)

References