1621 in literature

• January 27 – Sir Francis Bacon is created Viscount St Alban.[lower-alpha 1]
• February 3 – John Chamberlain writes to Sir Dudley Carleton telling him the anonymous author of the tract Vox Populi has been revealed to be the radical preacher Thomas Scott.
• May 3 – Sir Francis Bacon is imprisoned in the Tower of London after being convicted of receiving bribes, but pardoned by King James I later in the year.[5]
• August 26 – Barten Holyday's allegorical play Technogamia, originally produced at Christ Church, Oxford in 1618, is staged before James I at Woodstock Palace. He dislikes it, but is persuaded to stay to the end for the student actors' sakes.
• September 24 – The earliest known copy of the Corante, generally regarded as the first English newspaper, is published.
• November 22 – The English poet John Donne is installed as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral in London.
• December 30 – The Spanish writer Francisco de Borja y Aragón is replaced as Viceroy of Peru by Juan Jiménez de Montalvo, and embarks for home on the following day.

Uncertain date

• Jeremias Drexel gives up preaching in order to write a biography of Elisabeth of Lorraine.

• January 27 – Thomas Willis, English physician and natural philosopher (died 1675)
• March 18 – Henry Teonge, English diarist and naval chaplain (died 1690)
• March 31 – Andrew Marvell, English poet (died 1678)
• April 25 – Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, Anglo-Irish dramatist (died 1679)
• July 8 – Jean de La Fontaine, French author of fables (died 1695)
• December 3 – Bohuslav Balbín, Czech Jesuit writer (died 1688)
• December 14 (baptised) – Thomas Long, English writer and cleric (died 1707)
• Unknown dates
  • Jane Cavendish, English poet and playwright (died 1669)
  • Françoise Bertaut de Motteville, French memoirist (died 1689)

Uncertain year (1621 or 1622)

• Richard Allestree, English scholar and cleric (died 1681)

• March 4 – Ana de Jesús, Spanish nun and writer (born 1545)
• May 11 – Johann Arndt, German theologian (born 1555)
• June – William Strachey, English eye-witness historian (born 1572)
• August 3 – Guillaume du Vair, French writer (born 1556)
• August 15 – John Barclay, Scottish writer (born 1582)
• September 25 – Mary Sidney, English playwright and translator (born 1561)
• October 7 or 8 – Antoine de Montchrestien, French adventurer and dramatist (born c. 1575)
• December 4 – Andrew Willet, English polemicist and cleric (born 1562)

Uncertain dates

• Ludwig Hollonius, German dramatist (born c. 1570)
• François Pithou, French author and jurist (born 1543)