1696 in literature

• January – Colley Cibber's play Love's Last Shift is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.^[1]
• March 5 – William Penn marries his second wife, Hannah Callowhill.^[2]
• September – The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, stages The Female Wits, an anti-feminist satire targeting Mary Pix, Delarivier Manley and Catherine Trotter, the three significant women dramatists of the era. The play is a hit, and runs for three nights straight (unusual in the repertory system of the day).^[3]
• November 21 – John Vanbrugh's first play, the comedy The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, a sequel to Love's Last Shift, is first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, with Cibber in the cast.^[4]
• unknown date
  • The Tuscan poet Vincenzo da Filicaja becomes governor of Volterra.
  • Chapbook peddlers in England are required to hold a licence.

Fiction

• John Aubrey – Miscellanies^[5]
• Philip Ayres – The Revengeful Mistress
• Aphra Behn (died 1689) – The Histories and Novels of the Late Ingenious Mrs. Behn
• Charles Leslie – The Snake in the Grass
• Mary Pix – The Inhumane Cardinal; or, Innocence Betray'd (novel)
• John Suckling – The Works of Sir John Suckling
• John Tillotson – The Works of John Tillotson

Drama

• John Banks – Cyrus the Great, or The Tragedy of Love
• Aphra Behn – The Younger Brother
• Colley Cibber – Love's Last Shift^[1]
• Thomas Dilke – The City Lady
• Thomas Doggett – The Country Wake^[6]
• Thomas D'Urfey – The Comical History of Don Quixote. The Third Part
• George Granville, 1st Baron Lansdowne – The She-Gallants
• Joseph Harris – The City Bride; or, The Merry Cuckold (adapted from A Cure for a Cuckold)^[7]
• Charles Hopkins – Neglected Virtue^[7]
• Delarivier Manley
  • The Lost Lover, or The Jealous Husband
  • The Royal Mischief
• Peter Anthony Motteux
  • Love's a Jest
  • She Ventures and He Wins^[8]
• Mary Pix
  • The Spanish Wives
  • Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks^[9]
• Edward Ravenscroft – The Anatomist, or the Sham Doctor
• Thomas Southerne – Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave: a tragedy (adapted from Aphra Behn's novel Oroonoko - published)
• John Vanbrugh – The Relapse^[4]

Poetry

• Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate – New Version of the Psalms of David
• John Dryden – An Ode on the Death of Mr Henry Purcell (died 1695)^[10]
• John Oldmixon – Poems on Several Occasions
• Elizabeth Singer Rowe – Poems on Several Occasions
• Nahum Tate – Miscellanea Sacra; or, Poems on Divine & Moral Subjects

Non-fiction

• Richard Baxter – Reliquiae Baxterianae (posthumous)
• John Bellers – Proposals for Raising a College of Industry of All Useful Trades and Husbandry^[11]
• Gerard Croese – The General History of the Quakers (translation)
• Judith Drake (attributed) – An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex (anonymous)
• Delarivier Manley – Letters Written by Mrs. Manley
• William Penn – Primitive Christianity Revived in the Faith and Practice of the People called Quakers^[2]
• John Sheffield, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Normanby – The Character of Charles II, King of England
• John Toland – Christianity not Mysterious^[12]
• William Whiston – A New Theory of the Earth

• July 14 – William Oldys, English antiquary, bibliographer and poet (died 1761)
• September 25 – Madame du Deffand, French literary hostess (died 1780)^[13]
• October 13 – John Hervey, 2nd Baron Hervey, English memoirist and courtier (died 1743)
• Unknown date – Matthew Green, English writer of light verse and customs official (died 1737)

• January 3 – Mary Mollineux, English Quaker poet (born c.1651)
• March 14 – Jean Domat, French jurist (born 1625)^[14]
• March 18 – Bonaventura Baron, Irish theologian, philosopher and writer in Latin (born 1610)
• April 17 – Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, French author (born 1626)^[15]
• April 27 – Simon Foucher, French polemic philosopher (born 1644)
• May 10 – Jean de La Bruyère, French essayist (born 1645)^[16]
• June 9 – Antoine Varillas, French historian (born 1626)^[17]
• August 9 – Wacław Potocki, Polish nobleman (Szlachta), moralist, Baroque poet and writer (born 1621)
• September 8 – Henry Birkhead, English academic, lawyer, Latin poet and founder of the Oxford Chair of Poetry (born 1617)
• November 26 – Gregório de Matos, Brazilian Baroque poet (born 1636)
• December 31 – Samuel Annesley, English Puritan minister noted for his sermons (born c.1620)^[18]
• Unknown dates
  • Jón Magnússon, Icelandic writer (born c. 1610)
  • Gesshū Sōko (月舟宗胡), Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher, poet and calligrapher (born 1618)