1684 in literature

• June 25 – The death of Robert Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow, gives rise to establishment of the Leighton Library at Dunblane, the oldest surviving public subscription (lending) library in Scotland.
• July 25 – The English novelist and dramatist Mary Griffith marries merchant George Pix.
• November 11 – The English dramatist Nathaniel Lee is admitted to Bedlam Hospital for the insane.{{cite book |last1=Arnold |first1=Catharine |title=Bedlam: London and Its Mad |date=2009 |publisher=Simon and Schuster |isbn=9781847390004 |page=110 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BFZ3IRUs8YsC&pg=PA110|language=en}}
• unknown dates
• The Protestant Academy of Saumur is closed down by King Louis XIV of France.{{cite book|author1=Bernard Bolingbroke Woodward|author2=William Leist Readwin Cates|title=Encyclopaedia of Chronology: Historical and Biographical|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZeI0AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA1250|year=1872|publisher=Lee and Shepard|pages=1250–}}
• John Banks' historical play The Island Queens, or the Death of Mary Queen of Scotland is banned from the stage; it is produced as The Albion Queens twenty years later (1704).
• Pierre Bayle begins his journal of literary criticism, Nouvelles de la république des lettres.

• Aphra Behn – Love-Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister
• John Bunyan – The Pilgrim's Progress, Second Part
• Giovanni Paolo Marana – Letters Writ by a Turkish Spy
• Ihara Saikaku – The Great Mirror of Beauties

• Jean de La Chapelle – Ajax
• John Horne – Fortune's Task, or the Fickle Fair One{{cite book|author=Sylvia Stoler Wagonheim|title=The Annals of English Drama 975-1700|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kb1_AAAAQBAJ&pg=PA188|date=21 August 2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-67634-7|pages=188}}
• John Lacy – Sir Hercules Buffoon
• Simon Neale – The Mistaken Beauty (adapted from Corneille)
• John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (possible author) – Sodom, or the Quintessence of Debauchery
• Thomas Southerne – The Disappointment, or the Mother of Fashion
• Pedro Calderon de la Barca
• Los cabellos de Absalón
• Guárdate del agua mansa

• Aphra Behn – Poems upon Several Occasions{{cite book |last1=Wright |first1=Gillian |title=Producing Women's Poetry, 1600–1730: Text and Paratext, Manuscript and Print |date=2013 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9781107355668 |page=247 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=348gAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA247|language=en}}
• Pavao Ritter Vitezović – Odiljenje sigetsko (Farewell at Sziget)

• Jakob Abbadie – Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne
• Dorcas Dole – Once More a Warning to Thee, O England, but more particularly to the inhabitants of the city of Bristol (by a Quaker)
• Edward Phillips – Enchiridion linguae latinae
• Christian Knorr von Rosenroth – Kabbala Denudata (publication completed)
• Christopher Sandius – Bibliotheca antitrinitariorum
• George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax – The Character of a Trimmer
• Antonio de Solís y Rivadeneyra – Historia de la conquista de México

• February 21 – Justus van Effen, Dutch journalist writing also in French (died 1735)
• October 16 – Peter Walkden, English diarist (died 1769)
• December 3 – Ludvig Holberg, Danish/Norwegian essayist, philosopher and playwright (died 1754)

• April 1 – Roger Williams, English-born American theologian (born 1603)
• October 1 – Pierre Corneille, French dramatist (born 1606){{cite book|author=John Flower|title=Historical Dictionary of French Literature|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kd6tAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA150|date=17 January 2013|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-7945-4|pages=150}}
• December 7 – John Oldham, English satirical poet and translator (born 1653)
• Unknown date – Francisco de Avellaneda, Spanish dramatist and poet (born c. 1625)

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