This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1656.

List of years in literature (table)
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Events

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  • April 25 – In London, the Council of State, usually busy with larger matters, has taken on the censorship of individual books and orders Robert Tichborne, the Lord Mayor of the City of London, to burn a volume entitled Sportive Wit, or the Muses' Merriment for its "scandalous, lascivious, scurrilous, and profane matter".[1]
  • May 9Choice Drollery, Songs, and Sonnets is ordered to be destroyed by Britain's Council of State.
  • May – The Siege of Rhodes, Part I, by Sir William Davenant, the "first English opera" (under the guise of a recitative), is performed in a private theatre at his home, Rutland House, in the City of London. This includes the innovative use of painted backdrops and the appearance of England's first professional actress, Mrs. Coleman as Ianthe.[2]
  • July 27Baruch Spinoza is excluded from the Jewish religious community in Amsterdam.[3]
  • November 12John Milton marries Katherine Woodcock at St Mary Aldermanbury, London.[4]
  • unknown date – Two playbooks of old plays published in London in this year, The Careless Shepherdess and The Old Law, contain the first "play lists" or catalogs of published dramas ever issued in England.

New books

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Prose

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Children

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Drama

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Poetry

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Births

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Deaths

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References

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  1. ^ Arthur F. Marotti (1995). Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric. Cornell University Press. p. 268. ISBN 0-8014-8238-0.
  2. ^ Bevis, Richard W. (2014). English Drama: Restoration and Eighteenth Century 1660-1789. Routledge. p. 19. ISBN 978-1-317-87092-0.
  3. ^ Nadler, Steven (2001). Spinoza: A Life (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 120. ISBN 978-0-521-00293-6.
  4. ^ David Masson (1877). The Life of John Milton: 1654-1660. Macmillan and Company. p. 281.
  5. ^ David Seed (1 May 1995). Anticipations: Essays on Early Science Fiction and its Precursors. Syracuse University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8156-2640-4.
  6. ^ a b "Margaret Cavendish". The British Library. Retrieved 26 March 2019.
  7. ^ Robert F. Roden (1905). The Cambridge Press, 1638-1692: A History of the First Printing Press Established in English America, Together with a Bibliographical List of the Issues of the Press. Dodd, Mead. p. 67.
  8. ^ Mark McCartney; Andrew Whitaker (15 September 2003). Physicists of Ireland: Passion and Precision. CRC Press. p. 17. ISBN 978-1-4200-3317-5.
  9. ^ William Edward Flaherty (1857). The Annals of England: An Epitome of English History. John Henry and James Parker. p. 300.
  10. ^ Thomas Gage (1840). The History of Rowley: Anciently Including Bradford, Boxford, and Georgetown, from the Year 1639 to the Present Time. F. Andrews. p. 382.