1678 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1678.

Events

• February – English dramatist Thomas Otway, perhaps escaping from an unhappy love affair with his leading actress, obtains a commission in an English regiment serving in the Franco-Dutch War and is sent in July to Flanders.
• February 18 – The first part of English nonconformist John Bunyan's Christian allegory The Pilgrim's Progress, partly written while he was imprisoned for unlicensed preaching, is published in London.
• March – The novel La Princesse de Clèves, presumed to be by Madame de La Fayette, is published in Paris. It is set in 1558–1559 and an early example of a psychological novel.
• November – The English printer Joseph Moxon becomes the first tradesman to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

New books

Prose

• Manuel Ambrosio de Filguera – '
• John Barret – The Christian Temper, or, A Discourse Concerning the Nature and Properties of the Graces of Sanctification
• Jacob Boehme – , (Amsterdam & Frankfurt; contains a portrait of Boehme by N. van Werd)
• John Bunyan – The Pilgrim's Progress
• Ralph Cudworth – The True Intellectual System of the Universe
• Madame de La Fayette (anonymously) – La Princesse de Clèves
• Sir Thomas Herbert – Threnodia Carolina
• Thomas Hobbes – Decameron Physiologicum
• Josiah King – The Examination and Trial of Old Father Christmas Together with his Clearing by the Jury
• The Mowing-Devil: or, Strange News out of Hartford-Shire (a woodcut showing what is alleged to be the first crop circle)
• The Works of Geber, Englished by Richard Russell.
• Thomas Rymer – The Tragedies of the Last Age Considered
• Jacob Spon – Voyage d'Italie, de Dalmatie, de Grèce et du Levant
• Aernout van Overbeke – De rym-wercken