1693 in literature

• February 27 – March 17 – John Dunton publishes The Ladies' Mercury in London, the first periodical specifically for women.
• March – William Congreve's first play, the comedy The Old Bachelor, is performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London.[1]
• May – William Bradford prints the first book in New York, George Keith's New-England's Spirit of Persecution Transmitted to Pennsylvania.[2][3]
• July 29 – Anthony Wood is condemned in the vice-chancellor's court of the University of Oxford for libels against Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. He is fined and banished from the university until he recants. The offending pages are burned.
• October – Congreve's comedy The Double Dealer is first performed at Drury Lane.[1][4]

Uncertain dates

• Joseph Addison addresses an early poem to John Dryden.
• John Banks' historical play The Innocent Usurper, about Lady Jane Grey, is banned from the stage.
• Swedish scholar Petter Salan publishes in Upsala Fortissimorum pugilum Egilli et Asmundi historiam antqvo gothico sermone exaratam, the first printed edition of the 14th century Egils saga einhenda ok Ásmundar berserkjabana.
• Venetian sea-captain Julije Balović compiles Pratichae Schrivaneschae, including a five-language multilingual glossary.

• May 10 – John Fox, English biographer (died 1763)
• Unknown dates
  • Fray Casimiro Diaz, O.S.A., Spanish Augustinian friar and historian (died 1746)
  • Arthur Young, English religious writer and cleric (1759)
• Probable year of birth – Eliza Haywood, English dramatist, journalist and novelist (died 1756)

• April 9 – Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy, French memoirist (born 1618)
• May 25 – Madame de La Fayette, French writer (born 1634)
• May 27 – John Spencer, English scholar and cleric (born 1630)
• August (end) – Charles Blount, English deist author (suicide, born 1654)
• September 9 – Ihara Saikaku, Japanese poet and author of "floating world" fiction (born 1642)