1639 in literature

• c. January – The first printing press in British North America is launched in Cambridge, Massachusetts by Stephen Daye.
• February 14 – French writers Jacques Esprit and François de La Mothe Le Vayer are elected to the Académie française.
• May 21 – The King's Men act John Fletcher's The Mad Lover in London.
• December – Blaise Pascal's family move to Rouen.{{cite book|title=Great Inventors|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=t_IpszG7dIYC&pg=PA16|publisher=Sura Books|isbn=978-81-7478-595-4|pages=16}}
• December 7 – Francisco de Quevedo is arrested and imprisoned at León, Spain.{{cite book|author1=Germán Bleiberg|author2=Maureen Ihrie|author3=Janet Pérez|title=Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dHnf68YaK8wC&pg=PA1330|year=1993|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-28732-9|pages=1330}}
• unknown dates
• Simon Dach becomes professor of poetry at the University of Königsberg.
• Archbishop William Laud donates the manuscript of the Peterborough Chronicle to the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
• Thomas Heywood writes Londini Status Pacatus, the Lord Mayor of the City of London's annual pageant.{{cite book|author=Thomas Heywood|title=The golden age. 1611. The silver age. 1613. The brazen age. 1613. The first and second parts of the iron age. 1632|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gNkQAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA443|year=1874|publisher=J. Pearson|pages=443}} It will be the last such in London for 15 years, due to the English Civil War, but will resume under the Commonwealth.

• Jean du Vergier de Hauranne – Théologie familière, ou Instruction de ce que le Chrétien doit croire et faire en cette vie pour être sauvé
• Francisco de Quevedo – La isla de los monopantos
• Jan Marek Marci – De proportione motus seu regula sphygmica
• Friedrich Spanheim – Commentaire historique de la vie et de la mort de . . Christofle Vicomte de Dohna
• Henry Spelman (ed.) – Concilia, Decreta, Leges, Constitutiones in re Ecclesiarum Orbis Britannici (3 vols, containing many forgeries){{cite web |title=Myths of the Early British Church |url=http://exhibits.library.jhu.edu/exhibits/show/fakes-lies-and-forgeries/history-reimagined/myths-of-the-early-british-chu |work=Fakes, Lies, and Forgeries: Rare Books and Manuscripts from the Arthur and Janet Freeman Bibliotheca Fictiva Collection |publisher=Johns Hopkins University Libraries |location=Baltimore, MD|year=2014 |accessdate=2017-09-06}}

• Lodowick Carlell – Arviragus and Philicia, Parts 1 and 2 (published)
• George Chapman and James Shirley – The Tragedy of Chabot (published)
• Aston Cockayne – A Masque at Bretbie
• Pierre Corneille – L'Illusion comique, (published)
• T. D. (authorship disputed) – The Bloody Banquet (published)
• William Davenant – The Spanish Lovers
• Robert Davenport – A New Trick to Cheat the Devil (published)
• John Fletcher (posthumously)
• Monsieur Thomas (published)
• Wit Without Money (published)
• Henry Glapthorne
• Argalus and Parthenia (published)
• Albertus Wallenstein (published)
• Sir William Lower – The Phoenix in Her Flames
• Philip Massinger – The Unnatural Combat published
• Jasper Mayne – The City Match
• James Shirley
• The Politician (performed)
• The Ball
• The Maid's Revenge
• The Changes, or Love in a Maze (published)
• Sir John Suckling – Brennoralt, or the Discontented Colonel

• Richard Corbet – Certain Elegant Poems
• John Clarke – Paroemiologia ("Early to bed and early to rise...")
• Henry Glapthorne – Poems, including a series addressed to "Lucinda"
• Francis Quarles – Memorials Upon the Death of Sir Robert Quarles, Knight

• February 6 – Daniel Georg Morhof, German critic (died 1691)
• December 22 – Jean Racine, French dramatist (died 1699)
• unknown dates
• Thomas Ellwood, English religious writer (died 1713)
• César Vichard de Saint-Réal, French novelist (died 1692)
• probable – Charles Sedley, English wit and dramatist (died 1701)

• January – Shackerley Marmion, English dramatist (born 1603){{cite book|author1=Leslie Stephen|author2=Sir Sidney Lee|title=DNB|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HskcAQAAIAAJ|year=1893|publisher=Smith, Elder, & Company}}
• January 23 – Francisco Maldonado de Silva, Argentinian poet (burned at stake, born 1592)
• May 21 – Tommaso Campanella, Italian poet and theologian (born 1568)
• August 4 – Juan Ruiz de Alarcón, New Spanish dramatist (born c. 1581)
• August 20 – Martin Opitz von Boberfeld, German poet (born 1597)
• October – Elizabeth Cary, Viscountess Falkland, English poet, translator and dramatist (born 1585)
• November 26 – John Spottiswoode, Scottish historian (born 1565){{cite book|author=Samuel Warren|title=Miscellanies, critical, imaginative, and juridical (1855)|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D6FFAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA361|year=1855|publisher=W. Blackwood|pages=361}}
• Possible date – John Ford, English dramatist and poet (born 1586)

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