See also: 16th century in poetry

16th century in poetry

-Works published:* Hamzah Fansuri writes in the Malay language.* The compilation of Romances de los Señores de Nueva España, a collection of Aztec poetry .-England:* John Skelton -Works published:* Hamzah Fansuri writes in the Malay language.* The compilation of Romances de los Señores de Nueva...

, 15th century in literature

15th century in literature

See also: 15th century in poetry, 14th century in literature, other events of the 15th century, 16th century in literature, list of years in literature.-Events:* 1403 - The Yongle Encyclopedia is commissioned in China....

, other events of the 16th century

16th century

As a means of recording the passage of time, the 16th century lasted from 1501 to 1600. It is regarded by historians as the century in which the rise of the West occurred....

, 17th century in literature

17th century in literature

See also: 17th century in poetry, 16th century in literature*Early Modern literature*other events of the 17th century*18th century in literature, 1700 in literature,and list of years in literature.-Events and trends:...

, list of years in literature.

Events

1508

• • April 4 - John Lydgate
    John Lydgate
    John Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...
    
    's The Complaint of the Black Knight
    The Complaint of the Black Knight
    The Complaint of the Black Knight, by the English monk John Lydgate, is the oldest surviving book printed in Scotland which displays the printing date: 4 April 1508...
    
     becomes the first known book printed in Scotland
    Scotland
    Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
    
    .

1510

• • April 10 - Henry Cornelius Agrippa pens the dedication of De occulta philosophia libri tres to Johannes Trithemius
    Johannes Trithemius
    Johannes Trithemius , born Johann Heidenberg, was a German abbot, lexicographer, historian, cryptographer, polymath and occultist who had an influence on later occultism. The name by which he is more commonly known is derived from his native town of Trittenheim on the Mosel in Germany.-Life:He...
    
    .

1513

• • Johannes Potken
    Johannes Potken
    Johannes Potken was a German scholar, papal secretary and printer from Cologne, active at the beginning of the sixteenth century. In 1513 he had printed in Rome the Psalterium David et Cantica aliqua, in Ge'ez...
    
     publishes the first Ge'ez text, Psalterium David et Cantica aliqua, at Rome.

1515

• • Paolo Ricci translates Sha'are Orah by Joseph Gikatilla as Portae lucis.

1519

• • Apokopos by Bergadis, the first book in Modern Greek
    Modern Greek
    Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
    
     is printed in Venice.

1530

• • Paracelsus
    Paracelsus
    Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
    
     finishes to write Paragranum.

1537

• • Paracelsus
    Paracelsus
    Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
    
     starts to write Astronomia Magna or the whole Philosophia Sagax of the Great and Little World".

1538

• • Paracelsus
    Paracelsus
    Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
    
     finishes to write Astronomia Magna or the whole Philosophia Sagax of the Great and Little World".

1539

• • Marie Dentière
    Marie Dentière
    Marie Dentière was a Genevan Protestant reformer and theologian. She played an active role in Genevan religion and politics, playing a large role in the closure of Geneva's convents, and preaching with such reformers as John Calvin and William Farel...
    
     writes an open letter to Marguerite of Navarre
    Marguerite de Navarre
    Marguerite de Navarre , also known as Marguerite of Angoulême and Margaret of Navarre, was the queen consort of Henry II of Navarre...
    
    , sister of the King of France; the Epistre tres utile, or "very useful letter", calls for an expulsion of Catholic clergy from France.

1565

• • Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...
    
     enters the service of Cardinal Luigi d'Este at Ferrara.

1567

• • October 14 - António Ferreira
    António Ferreira
    António Ferreira was a Portuguese poet and the foremost representative of the classical school, founded by Francisco de Sá de Miranda. His most considerable work, Castro, is the first tragedy in Portuguese, and the second in modern European literature.-His life:Ferreira was a native of Lisbon...
    
     becomes Desembargador da Casa do Civel and leaves Coimbra
    Coimbra
    Coimbra is a city in the municipality of Coimbra in Portugal. Although it served as the nation's capital during the High Middle Ages, it is better-known for its university, the University of Coimbra, which is one of the oldest in Europe and the oldest academic institution in the...
    
     for Lisbon
    Lisbon
    Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
    
    .

1571

• • Michel de Montaigne
    Michel de Montaigne
    Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne , February 28, 1533 – September 13, 1592, was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance, known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and is popularly thought of as the father of Modern Skepticism...
    
     retires from public life and isolates himself in the tower of the Château de Montaigne.

1572

• • English law eliminates actors' companies lacking formal patronage, by labelling them "vagabonds".

1575

• • Sir Philip Sidney
    Philip Sidney
    Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
    
     meets Penelope Devereaux, the inspiration for his Astrophel and Stella
    Astrophel and Stella
    Likely composed in the 1580s, Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella is an English sonnet sequence containing 108 sonnets and 11 songs. The name derives from the two Greek words, 'aster' and 'phil' , and the Latin word 'stella' meaning star. Thus Astrophel is the star lover, and Stella is his star...
    
    .

1576

• • James Burbage
    James Burbage
    James Burbage was an English actor, theatre impresario, and theatre builder in the English Renaissance theatre. He built The Theatre, the facility famous as the first permanent dedicated theatre built in England since Roman times...
    
     builds The Theatre
    The Theatre
    The Theatre was an Elizabethan playhouse located in Shoreditch , just outside the City of London. It was the second permanent theatre ever built in England, after the Red Lion, and the first successful one...
    
    , the first permanent public playhouse in London
    London
    London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
    
    , to open the great age of Elizabethan drama
    English Renaissance theatre
    English Renaissance theatre, also known as early modern English theatre, refers to the theatre of England, largely based in London, which occurred between the Reformation and the closure of the theatres in 1642...
    
    .

1590

• • A troupe of boy actors, the Children of Paul's
    Children of Paul's
    The Children of Paul's was the name of a troupe of boy actors in Elizabethan and Jacobean London. Along with the Children of the Chapel, the Children of Paul's were the most important of the companies of boy players that constituted a distinctive feature of English Renaissance theatre.St...
    
    , are suppressed because of their playwright John Lyly
    John Lyly
    John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
    
    's role in the Marprelate controversy
    Marprelate Controversy
    The Marprelate Controversy was a war of pamphlets waged in England and Wales in 1588 and 1589, between a puritan writer who employed the pseudonym Martin Marprelate, and defenders of the Established Church....
    
    .

1597

• • Ben Jonson
    Ben Jonson
    Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
    
     is briefly jailed in Marshalsea Prison, after the suppression of his play, The Isle of Dogs
    The Isle of Dogs (play)
    The Isle of Dogs is a play by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson which was performed in 1597. It was immediately suppressed, and no copy of it is known to exist.-The Play:...
    
    .

1598

• • September 22 - Ben Jonson
    Ben Jonson
    Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
    
     kills actor Gabriel Spenser in a duel; he is convicted of manslaughter and imprisoned in Newgate Prison
    Newgate Prison
    Newgate Prison was a prison in London, at the corner of Newgate Street and Old Bailey just inside the City of London. It was originally located at the site of a gate in the Roman London Wall. The gate/prison was rebuilt in the 12th century, and demolished in 1777...
    
    .

New books

1501

• • The Book of Margery Kempe
    Margery Kempe
    Margery Kempe is known for dictating The Book of Margery Kempe, a work considered by some to be the first autobiography in the English language. This book chronicles, to some extent, her extensive pilgrimages to various holy sites in Europe and Asia, as well as her mystical conversations with God...
    
     (posthumous)
  • Marko Marulić
    Marko Marulic
    Marko Marulić |Split]], 18 August 1450 – Split, 5 January 1524) was a Croatian national poet and Christian humanist, known as the Crown of the Croatian Medieval Age and the father of the Croatian Renaissance. He signed his works as Marko Marulić Splićanin , Marko Pečenić, Marcus Marulus ...
    
     - Judita
    Judita
    Judita is one of the most important Croatian literary works, an epic poem written by the "father of Croatian literature" Marko Marulić in 1501.-Editions:...
    
    

1503

• • William Dunbar
    William Dunbar
    William Dunbar was a Scottish poet. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie , where, too, it is hinted that he was a member of the noble house of Dunbar....
    
     - The Thrissill and the Rois

1505

• • Georges Chastellain
    Georges Chastellain
    Georges Chastellain , Burgundian chronicler and poet, was a native of Aalst in Flanders. In spite of excessive partiality to the Duke of Burgundy, Chastellain's historical works are valuable for the accurate information they contain. As a poet he was famous among his contemporaries...
    
     - Récollections des merveilles advenues en mon temps (posthumous)
  • Stephen Hawes
    Stephen Hawes
    Stephen Hawes was a popular English poet during the Tudor period who is now little known. He was probably born in Suffolk owing to the commonness of the name in that area and, if his own statement of his age may be trusted, was born about 1474. It has been suggested that he was an illegitimate...
    
    
    • The Passtyme of Pleasure
    • The Temple of Glass
  • Lodovico Lazzarelli
    Lodovico Lazzarelli
    Ludovico Lazzarelli was an Italian poet, philosopher, courtier and alleged magician and diviner of the early Renaissance....
    
     - Crater Hermetics (posthumous).

1508

• • Johannes Trithemius
    Johannes Trithemius
    Johannes Trithemius , born Johann Heidenberg, was a German abbot, lexicographer, historian, cryptographer, polymath and occultist who had an influence on later occultism. The name by which he is more commonly known is derived from his native town of Trittenheim on the Mosel in Germany.-Life:He...
    
     - De septem secundeis.
  • William Dunbar
    William Dunbar
    William Dunbar was a Scottish poet. He was probably a native of East Lothian, as assumed from a satirical reference in the Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie , where, too, it is hinted that he was a member of the noble house of Dunbar....
    
     - The Goldyn Targe

1509

• • Erasmus - In Praise of Folly

1512

• • Henry Medwall
    Henry Medwall
    Henry Medwall was the first known English vernacular dramatist. Fulgens and Lucrece , whose heroine must choose between two suitors, is the earliest known secular English play. The other play of Medwall is titled Nature. He stayed at the court of Cardinal Morton, Chancellor in the time of Henry...
    
     - Fulgens and Lucrece
    Fulgens and Lucrece
    Fulgens and Lucrece is a late 15th-century interlude by Henry Medwall. It is the earliest purely secular English play that survives. Since John Cardinal Morton, for whom Medwall wrote the play, died in 1500, the work must have been written before that date...
    
    
  • Huldrych Zwingli
    Huldrych Zwingli
    Ulrich Zwingli was a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. Born during a time of emerging Swiss patriotism and increasing criticism of the Swiss mercenary system, he attended the University of Vienna and the University of Basel, a scholarly centre of humanism...
    
     - De Gestis inter Gallos et Helvetios relatio

1513

• • First translation of Virgil's
    Virgil
    Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
    
     Aeneid
    Aeneid
    The Aeneid is a Latin epic poem, written by Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. It is composed of roughly 10,000 lines in dactylic hexameter...
    
     into English language
    English language
    English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
    
     (Scots dialect) by Gavin Douglas
    Gavin Douglas
    Gavin Douglas was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, it is for his poetry that he is now chiefly remembered. His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first...
    
    

1514-15

• • Gian Giorgio Trissino
    Gian Giorgio Trissino
    Gian Giorgio Trissino was an Italian Renaissance humanist, poet, dramatist, diplomat, and grammarian.-Biography:...
    
     - Sofonisba

1515

• • Robert Fabyan - The New Chronicles of England and France

1516

• • Henry Cornelius Agrippa
    • Dialogus de homine (Casale
      Casale
      Casale, Italian from the late Latin casalis for an isolated house, or group of houses, in the countryside, may refer to:-People:*Gerald Casale musician*Giovanni Casale , an Italian judoka*Giuseppe Casale Italian bishop...
      
      )
    • De triplici ratione cognoscendi Deum
  • Marsilio Ficino
    Marsilio Ficino
    Marsilio Ficino was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance, an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin...
    
     - De triplici vita.
  • Thomas More
    Thomas More
    Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...
    
     - Utopia.

1517

• • Francysk Skaryna's Bible translation and printing
  • Teofilo Folengo
    Teofilo Folengo
    Teofilo Folengo , who wrote under the pseudonym of Merlino Coccajo or Merlinus Coccaius, was one of the principal Italian macaronic poets.-Biography:...
    
    's Baldo, a popular Italian work of comedy.

1518

• • Henry Cornelius Agrippa - De originali peccato

1524

• • Philippe de Commines
    Philippe de Commines
    Philippe de Commines was a writer and diplomat in the courts of Burgundy and France. He has been called "the first truly modern writer" and "the first critical and philosophical historian since classical times"...
    
     - Mémoires (Part 1: Books 1-6); first publication (Paris
    Paris
    Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
    
    )

1525

• • Francesco Giorgi
    Francesco Giorgi
    Francesco Giorgi Veneto was a Venetian Franciscan friar, and author of the work De harmonia mundi totius from 1525. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy describes him as 'idiosyncratic'. He wrote also In Scripturam Sacram Problemata .Giorgi is extensively discussed in Frances Yates, The...
    
     - De harmonia mundi totius
  • Paracelsus
    Paracelsus
    Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
    
     - De septem puncti idolotriae christianae.

1526

• • William Tyndale
    William Tyndale
    William Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
    
    's New Testament
    New Testament
    The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
    
     translation

1527

• • Hector Boece
    Hector Boece
    Hector Boece , known in Latin as Hector Boecius or Boethius, was a Scottish philosopher and first Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, a predecessor of the University of Aberdeen.-Biography:He was born in Dundee where he attended school...
    
     - Historia Scotorum
  • Philippe de Commines
    Philippe de Commines
    Philippe de Commines was a writer and diplomat in the courts of Burgundy and France. He has been called "the first truly modern writer" and "the first critical and philosophical historian since classical times"...
    
     - Mémoires (Part 2: Books 7-8); first publication

1528

• • Baltissare Castiglione - The Book of the Courtier
    The Book of the Courtier
    The Book of the Courtier is a courtesy book. It was written by Baldassare Castiglione over the course of many years, beginning in 1508, and published in 1528 by the Aldine Press just before his death...
    
    

1531

• • Michael Servetus
    Michael Servetus
    Michael Servetus was a Spanish theologian, physician, cartographer, and humanist. He was the first European to correctly describe the function of pulmonary circulation...
    
     - De trinitatis erroribus ("On the Errors of the Trinity")
  • Henry Cornelius Agrippa - Book One of De occulta philosophia libri tres
  • Paracelsus
    Paracelsus
    Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
    
     - Opus Paramirum (written in St. Gallen
    St. Gallen
    St. Gallen is the capital of the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. It evolved from the hermitage of Saint Gall, founded in the 7th century. Today, it is a large urban agglomeration and represents the center of eastern Switzerland. The town mainly relies on the service sector for its economic...
    
    ).

1532

• • Niccolò Machiavelli
    Niccolò Machiavelli
    Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, philosopher, humanist, and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance. He is one of the main founders of modern political science. He was a diplomat, political philosopher, playwright, and a civil servant of the Florentine Republic...
    
     - The Prince
    The Prince
    The Prince is a political treatise by the Italian diplomat, historian and political theorist Niccolò Machiavelli. From correspondence a version appears to have been distributed in 1513, using a Latin title, De Principatibus . But the printed version was not published until 1532, five years after...
    
    
  • François Rabelais
    François Rabelais
    François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
    
     - Pantagruel
    Gargantua and Pantagruel
    The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel is a connected series of five novels written in the 16th century by François Rabelais. It is the story of two giants, a father and his son and their adventures, written in an amusing, extravagant, satirical vein...
    
    
  • Feliciano de Silva
    Feliciano de Silva
    Feliciano de Silva was a Spanish writer.de Silva was born in Ciudad Rodrigo to a powerful family, Silva wrote “sequels” to Celestina and Amadis de Gaula. Silva was a prolific writer. His first chivalresque work, Lisurate de Grecia , was published in 1514. It is a relatively short work...
    
     - Don Florisel de Niquea

1533

• • Henry Cornelius Agrippa - Books Two and Three of De occulta philosophia libri tres

1534

• • Martin Luther
    Martin Luther
    Martin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
    
    's Bible translation
  • François Rabelais
    François Rabelais
    François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
    
     - Gargantua
  • Polydore Vergil
    Polydore Vergil
    Polydore Vergil was an Italian historian, otherwise known as PV Castellensis. He is better known as the contemporary historian during the early Tudor dynasty. He was hired by King Henry VIII of England, who wanted to distance himself from his father Henry VII as much as possible, to document...
    
     - Historia Anglica

1535

• • John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners
    John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners
    John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners was a statesman and translator, born at Sherfield, Hertfordshire, England, to Sir Humphrey Bourchier and Elizabeth Tilney, and educated at Oxford University. He held various Offices of State, including that of Chancellor of the Exchequer to King Henry VIII, and...
    
     - Huon of Bordeaux
    Huon of Bordeaux
    Huon of Bordeaux is the title character of a 13th century French epic with romance elements. He is a knight who, after unwittingly killing Charlot, the son of Emperor Charlemagne, is given a reprieve from death on condition that he fulfill a number of seemingly impossible tasks: he must travel to...
    
    

1536

• • John Calvin
    John Calvin
    John Calvin was an influential French theologian and pastor during the Protestant Reformation. He was a principal figure in the development of the system of Christian theology later called Calvinism. Originally trained as a humanist lawyer, he broke from the Roman Catholic Church around 1530...
    
     - Institutes of the Christian Religion
    Institutes of the Christian Religion
    The Institutes of the Christian Religion is John Calvin's seminal work on Protestant systematic theology...
    
     (in Latin)
  • Paracelsus
    Paracelsus
    Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
    
     - Die große Wundarzney.

1538

• • Hélisenne de Crenne
    Hélisenne de Crenne
    Hélisenne de Crenne was the pseudonym of Marguerite Briet , a French novelist, epistolary writer and translator during the Renaissance.-Life:...
    
     - Les Angoisses douloureuses qui procèdent d'amours

1539

• • Sir Thomas Elyot
    Thomas Elyot
    Sir Thomas Elyot was an English diplomat and scholar.-Early Life:Thomas was the child of Sir Richard Elyot's first marriage with Alice De la Mare, but neither the date nor place of his birth is accurately known...
    
     - The Castel of Helth

1540

• • Historia Scotorum of Hector Boece
    Hector Boece
    Hector Boece , known in Latin as Hector Boecius or Boethius, was a Scottish philosopher and first Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, a predecessor of the University of Aberdeen.-Biography:He was born in Dundee where he attended school...
    
    , translated into vernacular Scots by John Bellenden
    John Bellenden
    John Bellenden or Ballantyne of Moray was a Scottish writer of the 16th century.He was born towards the close of the 15th century, and educated at St. Andrews and Paris. At the request of James V he translated Hector Boece's Historia Gentis Scotorum...
    
     at the special request of James V of Scotland
    James V of Scotland
    James V was King of Scots from 9 September 1513 until his death, which followed the Scottish defeat at the Battle of Solway Moss...
    
    

1541

• • George Buchanan
    George Buchanan (humanist)
    George Buchanan was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. He was part of the Monarchomach movement.-Early life:...
    
    
    • Baptistes
    • Jephtha

1542

• • Paul Fagius
    Paul Fagius
    Paul Fagius was a Renaissance scholar of Biblical Hebrew.-Life:Fagius was born at Rheinzabern in 1504. His father was a teacher and council clerk. In 1515 he went to study at the University of Heidelberg and in 1518 was present at the Heidelberg Disputation...
    
     - Liber Fidei seu Veritatis
  • Edward Hall
    Edward Hall
    Edward Hall , English chronicler and lawyer, was born about the end of the 15th century, being a son of John Hall of Northall, Shropshire....
    
     - The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke

1543

• • Andreas Vesalius
    Vesalius
    Andreas Vesalius was a Flemish anatomist, physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica . Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy. Vesalius is the Latinized form of Andries van Wesel...
    
     - De humani corporis fabrica libri septem
    De humani corporis fabrica
    De humani corporis fabrica libri septem is a textbook of human anatomy written by Andreas Vesalius in 1543....
    
     (On the Fabric of the Human body in Seven Books)
  • Nicolaus Copernicus
    Nicolaus Copernicus
    Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe....
    
     - De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
    De revolutionibus orbium coelestium
    De revolutionibus orbium coelestium is the seminal work on the heliocentric theory of the Renaissance astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus...
    
     (On the Revolution of the Heavenly Spheres)

1545

• • Roger Ascham
    Roger Ascham
    Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education...
    
     - Toxophilus
    Toxophilus
    Toxophilus is a book about longbow archery by Roger Ascham, first published in London in 1545. Dedicated to King Henry VIII, it is the first book on archery written in English....
    
    
  • Bernard Etxepare
    Bernard Etxepare
    Bernard Etxepare was a Basque writer of the 16th century, most famous for a collection of poems titled Linguæ Vasconum Primitiæ he published in 1545, the first book to be published in the Basque language....
    
     - Linguae Vasconum Primitiae
  • Queen Katherine Parr
    Catherine Parr
    Catherine Parr ; 1512 – 5 September 1548) was Queen consort of England and Ireland and the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII of England. She married Henry VIII on 12 July 1543. She was the fourth commoner Henry had taken as his consort, and outlived him...
    
     - Prayers and Meditations; became the first book published by an English queen under her own name.

1546

• • François Rabelais
    François Rabelais
    François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
    
     - Le tiers livre

1547

• • Martynas Mažvydas
    Martynas Mažvydas
    Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas (1510 near Žemaičių Naumiestis (now in Šilutė district municipality) - May 21, 1563 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) was the author and the editor of the first printed book in the Lithuanian language....
    
     - The Simple Words of Catechism (first printed book in Lithuanian language)
  • Queen Katherine Parr
    Catherine Parr
    Catherine Parr ; 1512 – 5 September 1548) was Queen consort of England and Ireland and the last of the six wives of King Henry VIII of England. She married Henry VIII on 12 July 1543. She was the fourth commoner Henry had taken as his consort, and outlived him...
    
     - The Lamentation of a Sinner

1549

• • Johannes Aal
    Johannes Aal
    Johannes Aal was a Swiss Roman Catholic theologian, composer and dramaturg.Aal was born in Bremgarten, Switzerland, and was pastor there until 1529, then Leutpriester in Baden until 1536. In the monastery of Solothurn, he became preacher and choir leader in 1538...
    
     - Johannes der Täufer (St. John Baptist)
  • The Complaynt of Scotland
    The Complaynt of Scotland
    The Complaynt of Scotland is a book printed in 1549 and is an important work of the Scots language.The book is a continuation of the war of words between Scotland and England in the sixteenth century...
    
    

1550

• • Martin Bucer
    Martin Bucer
    Martin Bucer was a Protestant reformer based in Strasbourg who influenced Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican doctrines and practices. Bucer was originally a member of the Dominican Order, but after meeting and being influenced by Martin Luther in 1518 he arranged for his monastic vows to be annulled...
    
     - De regno Christi
  • The Facetious Nights of Straparola
    The Facetious Nights of Straparola
    ]The Facetious Nights of Straparola , also known as The Nights of Straparola, is a two-volume collection of 75 stories by Italian author and fairy-tale collector Giovanni Francesco Straparola...
    
     published in Italian. The first European storybook to contain fairy-tales.

1552

• • François Rabelais
    François Rabelais
    François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
    
     - Le quart livre
  • Gerónimo de Santa Fe
    Gerónimo de Santa Fe
    Jerónimo de Santa Fe was a Spanish physician and religious writer who after conversion to Catholicism, wrote in Latin as Hieronymus de Sancta Fide ....
    
     - Hebræomastix (posthumous)
  • Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis
    Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis
    The Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis is an Aztec herbal manuscript, describing the medicinal properties of various plants used by the Aztecs...
    
     (Little Book of the Medicinal Herbs of the Indians), composed in Nahuatl by Martín de la Cruz and translated into Latin by Juan Badiano
    Juan Badiano
    Juan Badiano was the translator of Libellus de Medicinalibus Indorum Herbis ca. 1552, from Nahuatl to Latin. The book was a compendium of 250 medicinal herbs used by the Aztecs. This compilation was originally done by Martin de la Cruz...
    
    .

1553

• • Francesco Patrizi
    Francesco Patrizi
    Franciscus Patricius was a philosopher and scientist from the Republic of Venice. He was known as a defender of Platonism and an opponent of Aristotelianism...
    
     - La Città felice ("The Happy City")

1554

• • anon - Lazarillo de Tormes
    Lazarillo de Tormes
    The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities is a Spanish novella, published anonymously because of its heretical content...
    
    

1559

• • The Elizabethan
    Elizabeth I of England
    Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
    
     version of the Book of Common Prayer
    Book of Common Prayer
    The Book of Common Prayer is the short title of a number of related prayer books used in the Anglican Communion, as well as by the Continuing Anglican, "Anglican realignment" and other Anglican churches. The original book, published in 1549 , in the reign of Edward VI, was a product of the English...
    
     of the Church of England
    Church of England
    The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
    
    , which remained in use until the mid-17th century and was the first English Prayer Book in America.
  • Jorge de Montemayor
    Jorge de Montemayor
    Jorge de Montemayor was a Portuguese novelist and poet, who wrote almost exclusively in Spanish.-Biography:He was born at Montemor-o-Velho , whence he derived his name, the Spanish form of which is Montemayor....
    
     - Diana

1560

• • Jacques Grévin
    Jacques Grévin
    Jacques Grévin was a French dramatist.Grévin was born at Clermont, Oise in about 1539, and he studied medicine at the University of Paris. He became a disciple of Ronsard, and was one of the band of dramatists who sought to introduce the classical drama in France...
    
     - Jules César
  • William Whittingham
    William Whittingham
    William Whittingham was an English Biblical scholar and religious reformer. Educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, he became a zealous Protestant; as such he found it prudent to flee to France when Mary I ascended the throne of England....
    
    , Anthony Gilby
    Anthony Gilby
    Anthony Gilby was an English clergyman, known as a radical Puritan and Geneva Bible translator.He was born in Lincolnshire, and was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, graduating in 1535.-Early life:...
    
    , Thomas Sampson
    Thomas Sampson
    Thomas Sampson was an English Puritan theologian. A Marian exile, he was one of the Geneva Bible translators. On his return to England, he had trouble with conformity to the Anglican practices...
    
     - Geneva Bible
    Geneva Bible
    The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into the English language, preceding the King James translation by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of the 16th century Protestant movement and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John...
    
    

1562

• • William Bullein - Bullein's Bulwarke of Defence againste all Sicknes, Sornes, and Woundes

1563

• • John Foxe
    John Foxe
    John Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
    
     - Foxe's Book of Martyrs
    Foxe's Book of Martyrs
    The Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, more accurately Acts and Monuments, is an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian church history and martyrology...
    
    

1564

• • John Dee
    John Dee (mathematician)
    John Dee was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occultist, navigator, imperialist and consultant to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination and Hermetic philosophy....
    
     - Monas Hieroglyphica
    Monas Hieroglyphica
    The Monas Hieroglyphica is an esoteric symbol invented and designed by John Dee, the Elizabethan Magus and Court Astrologer of Elizabeth I of England...
    
    

1565

• • Camillo Porzio
    Camillo Porzio
    Camillo Porzio was an Italian historian.He belonged to a wealthy and noble Neapolitan family, and was the son of the philosopher Simone Porzio...
    
     - La Congiura dei baroni

1567

• • Joan Perez de Lazarraga
    Joan Perez de Lazarraga
    Joan Perez de Lazarraga, Lord of Larrea Tower was a Basque writer, who was born and died in Larrea, Álava.Lazarraga, the lord of Larrea, and a member of a family originating in Oñati. As a writer, he was one of the few Renaissance authors writing in Basque...
    
     - Silbero, Silbia, Doristeo, and Sirena (MS in Basque language)

1569

• • Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga - La Araucana
    La Araucana
    La Araucana is an epic poem in Spanish about the Spanish conquest of Chile, by Alonso de Ercilla; it is also known in English as The Araucaniad...
    
    , part 1

1571

• • François de Belleforest
    François de Belleforest
    François de Belleforest was a prolific French author, poet and translator of the Renaissance. He was born in a poor family and his father was killed when he was seven...
    
     - La Pyrénée (or La Pastorale amoureuse) (the first French "pastoral novel")

1572

• • Friedrich Risner
    Friedrich Risner
    Friedrich Risner was a German mathematician from Hersfeld , Hesse. He was a student of Petrus Ramus and was the first chair of mathematics at Collège Royale de France....
    
     - Opticae thesaurus
  • Turba Philosophorum
    Turba Philosophorum
    The Turba Philosophorum, also known as Assembly of the Philosophers, is one of the oldest European alchemy texts, translated from the Arabic, like the Picatrix...
    
    

1576

• • Jean Boudin - Six livres de la République
  • George Pettie - A Petite Palace of Pettie His Pleasure
  • The Paradise of Dainty Devices, the most popular of the Elizabethan verse miscellanies

1577

• • Richard Eden
    Richard Eden
    Richard Eden was an alchemist and translator. His translations of the geographic works of other writers helped foster a spirit of overseas exploration in Tudor England.-Early life:...
    
     - The History of Travayle in the West and East Indies
  • Thomas Hill
    Thomas Hill (author)
    Thomas Hill, was an astrologer, author and translator who most probably also wrote as Didymus Mountain . He was the author of the first popular book in English about gardening — The profitable arte of gardening, first published in 1563 under the title A most briefe and pleasaunte treatyse,...
    
     - The Gardener's Labyrinth
  • Raphael Holinshed
    Raphael Holinshed
    Raphael Holinshed was an English chronicler, whose work, commonly known as Holinshed's Chronicles, was one of the major sources used by William Shakespeare for a number of his plays....
    
     - The Chronicles of England, Scotland and Irelande

1578

• • George Best - A True Discourse of the Late Voyages of Discoverie…under the Conduct of Martin Frobisher
    Martin Frobisher
    Sir Martin Frobisher was an English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to look for the Northwest Passage...
    
    
  • John Florio - First Fruits
  • Jaroš Griemiller
    Jaroš Griemiller
    Jaroš Griemiller of Třebsko was a Czech alchemist, remembered for his illuminated manuscript Rosarium philosophorum. He worked under Wilhelm von Rosenberg in the 1570s, and dedicated the Rosarium to him. He completed work on the manuscript in 1578 while he was working in Český Krumlov....
    
     - Rosarium philosophorum
  • Gabriel Harvey
    Gabriel Harvey
    Gabriel Harvey was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, though his reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe...
    
     - Smithus, vel Musarum lachrymae
  • John Lyly
    John Lyly
    John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
    
     - Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit
    Euphues (1578)
    Euphues: The Anatomy of Wyt published in 1578 was a didactic romance written by John Lyly and followed two years later by Euphues and his England ; the term "Euphues" is derived from Greek meaning "graceful, witty". Lyly's mannered style is characterized by parallel arrangements and...
    
    

1579

• • Stephen Gosson
    Stephen Gosson
    Stephen Gosson was an English satirist.He was baptized at St George's church, Canterbury, on 17 April 1554. He entered Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1572, and on leaving the university in 1576 he went to London...
    
     - The Schoole of Abuse
  • Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge was an English dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.-Early life and education:...
    
     - Honest Excuses

1582

• • George Buchanan
    George Buchanan (humanist)
    George Buchanan was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. He was part of the Monarchomach movement.-Early life:...
    
     - Rerum Scoticarum Historia
  • Richard Hakluyt
    Richard Hakluyt
    Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and...
    
     - Divers Voyages

1583

• • Philip Stubbes - The Anatomy of Abuses

1584

• • James VI of Scotland
    James I of England
    James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...
    
     - Some Reulis and Cautelis
  • David Powel
    David Powel
    David Powel was a Welsh Church of England clergyman and historian who published the first printed history of Wales in 1584.-Life:...
    
     - Historie of Cambria
  • Reginald Scot
    Reginald Scot
    Reginald Scot was an English country gentleman and Member of Parliament, now remembered as the author of The Discoverie of Witchcraft, which was published in 1584. It was written against the belief in witches, to show that witchcraft did not exist...
    
     - The Discovery of Witchcraft

1585

• • Miguel de Cervantes
    Miguel de Cervantes
    Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
    
     - La Galatea
    La Galatea
    La Galatea was Miguel de Cervantes’ first book, published in 1585.Under the guise of pastoral characters, it is an examination of love and contains many allusions to contemporary literary figures....
    
    

1586

• • John Knox
    John Knox
    John Knox was a Scottish clergyman and a leader of the Protestant Reformation who brought reformation to the church in Scotland. He was educated at the University of St Andrews or possibly the University of Glasgow and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1536...
    
     - Historie of the Reformatioun of Religioun within the Realms of Scotland
  • John Lyly
    John Lyly
    John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
    
     - Pappe with an hatchet, alias a figge for my Godsonne
  • George Puttenham
    George Puttenham
    George Puttenham was a sixteenth-century English writer, literary critic, and notorious rake. He is generally considered to be the author of the enormously influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, The Arte of English Poesie ....
    
     (attr.) - The Arte of English Poesie
  • Luis Barahona de Soto
    Luis Barahona de Soto
    Luis Barahona de Soto was a Spanish poet.Born at Lucena , he was educated at Granada, and practised as a physician at Cordoba. His major work is the Primera parte de la Angélica , a continuation of the Orlando furioso...
    
     - Primera parte de la Angélica

1588

• • Thomas Hariot - A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia
  • Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...
    
     - The Anatomie of Absurditie

1590

• • Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge was an English dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.-Early life and education:...
    
     - Rosalynde
  • Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...
    
     - An Almond for a Parrat

1592

• • Robert Greene
    Robert Greene (16th century)
    Robert Greene was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A...
    
     - Greene's Groatsworth of Wit
  • Gabriel Harvey
    Gabriel Harvey
    Gabriel Harvey was an English writer. Harvey was a notable scholar, though his reputation suffered from his quarrel with Thomas Nashe...
    
     - Foure Letters and certaine Sonnets
  • Richard Johnson
    Richard Johnson (16th century)
    Richard Johnson was an English romance writer. He was baptized in London on May 4, 1573. His most famous work is The Famous Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendom . The success of this book was so great that the author added a second and a third part in 1608 and 1616...
    
     - Nine Worthies of London
    Nine Worthies of London
    Nine Worthies of London is a book by Richard Johnson, the English romance writer, written in 1592. Borrowing the theme from the Nine Worthies of Antiquity, the book, subtitled Explaining the Honourable Excise of Armes, the Vertues of the Valiant, and the Memorable Attempts of Magnanimous Minds;...
    
    

1594

• • Sir John Davys - The Seamans Secrets
  • Richard Hooker - Of the Lawes of Ecclesiastical Politie

1595

• • Sir Philip Sidney
    Philip Sidney
    Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
    
     (posthumous) - Defense of Poesy, a.k.a. An Apologie for Poetrie

1596

• • Sir Walter Raleigh
    Walter Raleigh
    Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
    
     - The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empyre of Guiana

1597

• • Francis Bacon
    Francis Bacon
    Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
    
     Essays
    Essays (Francis Bacon)
    Essayes: Religious Meditations. Places of Perswasion and Disswasion. Seene and Allowed was the first published book by the philosopher, statesman and jurist Francis Bacon. The Essays are written in a wide range of styles, from the plain and unadorned to the epigrammatic...
    
    

1598

• • John Bodenham
    John Bodenham
    John Bodenham , anthologist, is stated to have been the editor of some of the Elizabethan anthologies, viz., Politeuphuia , Wits' Theater , Belvidere, or the Garden of the Muses , and England's Helicon . Mr...
    
     - Politeuphuia (Wits' Commonwealth)
  • King James VI of Scotland - The Trew Law of Free Monarchies
  • Francis Meres
    Francis Meres
    Francis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
    
     - Palladis Tamia, Wits Treasury
  • John Stow
    John Stow
    John Stow was an English historian and antiquarian.-Early life:The son of Thomas Stow, a tallow-chandler, he was born about 1525 in London, in the parish of St Michael, Cornhill. His father's whole rent for his house and garden was only 6s. 6d. a year, and Stow in his youth fetched milk every...
    
     - Survey of London

1599

• • John Bodenham
    John Bodenham
    John Bodenham , anthologist, is stated to have been the editor of some of the Elizabethan anthologies, viz., Politeuphuia , Wits' Theater , Belvidere, or the Garden of the Muses , and England's Helicon . Mr...
    
     - Wits' Theater

New drama

1508

• • The World and the Child
    The World and the Child
    The World and the Child is an anonymous English morality play. Its source is a late 14th-century or 15th-century poem The Mirror of the Periods of Man's Life, from which the play borrows significantly while reducing the number of characters...
    
    , also known as Mundas et Infans (probable date of composition)

1536

• • Hans Ackermann
    Hans Ackermann
    Hans Ackermann was a German dramatist, living in Zwickau. He was a close friend of Paul Rebhun, another contemporary dramatist.-Publications:* Der Verlorene Sohn, 1536...
    
     - Der Verlorene Sohn

1541

• • Giovanni Battista Giraldi
    Giovanni Battista Giraldi
    Giovanni Battista Giraldi was an Italian novelist and poet. He appended the nickname Cinthio to his name and is commonly referred to by that name .Born at Ferrara, he was educated at the university there, and in 1525 became its professor of natural philosophy...
    
     - Orbecche
    Orbecche
    Orbecche is a tragedy written by Giovanni Battista Giraldi in 1541. It was the first modern tragedy written on classical principles, and along with Sperone Speroni's Canace, was responsible for a sixteenth-century theoretical debate on theater, especially with regards to decorum.It was produced in...
    
    

1551

• • Marin Držić
    Marin Držic
    Marin Držić is considered the finest Croatian Renaissance playwright and prose writer.- Life :Born into a large and well to do family in Dubrovnik, Držić was trained and ordained as a priest — a calling very unsuitable for his rebel temperament...
    
     - Dundo Maroje

1553

• • (about 1553) – Gammer Gurton's Needle and Ralph Roister Doister
    Ralph Roister Doister
    Ralph Roister Doister is a comic play by Nicholas Udall, generally regarded as the first comedy to be written in the English language.The date of its composition is disputed, but the balance of opinion suggests that it was written in about 1553, when Udall was a teacher in London, and was intended...
    
    , the first comedies written in the English language
    English language
    English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
    
    
  • António Ferreira
    António Ferreira
    António Ferreira was a Portuguese poet and the foremost representative of the classical school, founded by Francisco de Sá de Miranda. His most considerable work, Castro, is the first tragedy in Portuguese, and the second in modern European literature.-His life:Ferreira was a native of Lisbon...
    
     - Bristo

1562

• • Thomas Norton
    Thomas Norton
    Thomas Norton was an English lawyer, politician, writer of verse — but not, as has been claimed, the chief interrogator of Queen Elizabeth I.-Official career:...
    
     and Thomas Sackville
    Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset
    Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset was an English statesman, poet, dramatist and Freemason. He was the son of Richard Sackville, a cousin to Anne Boleyn. He was a Member of Parliament and Lord High Treasurer.-Biography:...
    
     - Gorboduc
    Gorboduc (play)
    Gorboduc, also titled Ferrex and Porrex, is an English play from 1561. It was performed before Queen Elizabeth I on 18 January 1562, by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple...
    
    
  • Jack Juggler - anonymous, sometimes attributed to Nicholas Udall
    Nicholas Udall
    Nicholas Udall was an English playwright, cleric, pederast and schoolmaster, the author of Ralph Roister Doister, generally regarded as the first comedy written in the English language.-Biography:...
    
    

1566

• • George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...
    
     - Supposes

1567

• • John Pickering - Horestes
    Horestes
    Horestes is a late Tudor morality play by the English dramatist John Pickering. It was first published in 1567 and was most likely performed by Lord Rich's men as part of the Christmas revels at court that year...
    
    

1568

• • Ulpian Fulwell - Like Will to Like

1573

• • Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso
    Torquato Tasso was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata , in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem...
    
     - Aminta
    Aminta
    Aminta is a play written by Torquato Tasso in 1573, represented during a garden party at the court of Ferrara. Both the actors and the public were noble persons living at the Court, who could understand subtle allusions the poet made to that style of life, in contrast with the life of shepherds,...
    
    

1582

• • Giovanni Battista Guarini
    Giovanni Battista Guarini
    Giovanni Battista Guarini was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.- Life :He was born in Ferrara, and spent his early life both in Padua and Ferrara, entering the service of Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1567...
    
     - Il pastor fido

1584

• • John Lyly
    John Lyly
    John Lyly was an English writer, best known for his books Euphues,The Anatomy of Wit and Euphues and His England. Lyly's linguistic style, originating in his first books, is known as Euphuism.-Biography:John Lyly was born in Kent, England, in 1553/1554...
    
    
    • Campaspe
      Campaspe (play)
      Campaspe is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by John Lyly. Widely considered Lyly's earliest drama, Campaspe was an influence and a precedent for much that followed in English Renaissance drama.-Performance and publication:...
      
      
    • Sapho and Phao
      Sapho and Phao
      Sapho and Phao is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by John Lyly. One of Lyly's earliest dramas, it was likely the first that the playwright devoted to the allegorical idealization of Queen Elizabeth I that became the predominating feature of Lyly's dramatic canon.-Performance and...
      
      
  • George Peele
    George Peele
    George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
    
     - The Arraignment of Paris
  • Robert Wilson
    Robert Wilson (dramatist)
    Robert Wilson , was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles....
    
      - The Three Ladies of London
    The Three Ladies of London
    The Three Ladies of London is an Elizabethan era stage play, first published in 1584. It is unusual and noteworthy as a philo-Semitic response to the prevailing anti-Semitism of Elizabethan drama and the larger contemporaneous English society....
    
     (published)

1588

• • George Peele
    George Peele
    George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
    
     - The Battle of Alcazar (performed)

1589

• • The Rare Triumphs of Love and Fortune - anonymous (published)

1590

• • Christopher Marlowe
    Christopher Marlowe
    Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...
    
     - Tamburlaine
    Tamburlaine (play)
    Tamburlaine the Great is the name of a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor, Timur 'the lame'...
    
     (both parts published)
  • George Peele
    George Peele
    George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
    
     - Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First
    Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First
    "The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First" is a play by George Peele, published 1593, chronicling the career of Edward I of England.The play concentrates on the power struggle between Edward I and Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, also glancing at the reign and fall of John Balliol...
    
    
  • Robert Wilson
    Robert Wilson (dramatist)
    Robert Wilson , was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles....
    
      - The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London (published)

1591

• • John Lyly - Endymion
    Endymion (play)
    Endymion, the Man in the Moon is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy by John Lyly. The play provides a vivid example of the cult of flattery in the royal court of Queen Elizabeth I, and has been called "without doubt, the boldest in conception and the most beautiful in execution of all Lyly's...
    
     (published)
  • The Troublesome Reign of King John
    The Troublesome Reign of King John
    The Troublesome Reign of King John is an Elizabethan history play, generally accepted by scholars as the source and model that William Shakespeare employed for his own King John ....
    
     - Anonymous (published)

1592

• • Thomas Kyd
    Thomas Kyd
    Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
    
     - The Spanish Tragedy
    The Spanish Tragedy
    The Spanish Tragedy, or Hieronimo is Mad Again is an Elizabethan tragedy written by Thomas Kyd between 1582 and 1592. Highly popular and influential in its time, The Spanish Tragedy established a new genre in English theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent...
    
     (published)
  • William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
    
     - Henry VI, Part 1
    Henry VI, part 1
    Henry VI, Part 1 or The First Part of Henry the Sixt is a history play by William Shakespeare, and possibly Thomas Nashe, believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England...
    
    , Part 2
    Henry VI, part 2
    Henry VI, Part 2 or The Second Part of Henry the Sixt is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England...
    
    , Part 3
    Henry VI, part 3
    Henry VI, Part 3 or The Third Part of Henry the Sixt is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591, and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England...
    
    
  • Arden of Faversham
    Arden of Faversham
    Arden of Faversham is an Elizabethan play, entered into the Register of the Stationers Company on 3 April 1592, and printed later that same year by Edward White. It depicts the murder of one Thomas Arden by his wife Alice Arden and her lover, and their subsequent discovery and punishment...
    
     - anonymous (previously attributed to Shakespeare)

1594

• • Samuel Daniel
    Samuel Daniel
    Samuel Daniel was an English poet and historian.-Early life:Daniel was born near Taunton in Somerset, the son of a music-master. He was the brother of lutenist and composer John Danyel. Their sister Rosa was Edmund Spenser's model for Rosalind in his The Shepherd's Calendar; she eventually married...
    
     - Cleopatra
  • Robert Greene
    Robert Greene (16th century)
    Robert Greene was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A...
    
    
    • Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
      Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay
      The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is an Elizabethan era stage play, a comedy written by Robert Greene. Widely regarded as Greene's best and most significant play, it has received more critical attention than any other of Greene's dramas.-Date:The date of authorship of Friar...
      
        (published)
    • Orlando Furioso (published)
  • Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge
    Thomas Lodge was an English dramatist and writer of the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods.-Early life and education:...
    
     & Robert Greene - A Looking Glass for London
    A Looking Glass for London
    A Looking Glass for London and England is an Elizabethan era stage play, a collaboration between Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene. Recounting the Biblical story of Jonah and the fall of Nineveh, the play is a noteworthy example of the survival of the Medieval morality play style of drama in the...
    
     (published)
  • Lope de Vega
    Lope de Vega
    Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
    
     - El maestro de danzar - (The Dancing Master)
  • George Peele
    George Peele
    George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
    
     - The Battle of Alcazar (published)
  • William Shakespeare - Romeo and Juliet
    Romeo and Juliet
    Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
    
    
  • Robert Wilson
    Robert Wilson (dramatist)
    Robert Wilson , was an Elizabethan dramatist who worked primarily in the 1580s and 1590s. He is also believed to have been an actor who specialized in clown roles....
    
     - The Cobbler's Prophecy (published)

1595

• • Locrine
    Locrine
    Locrine is an Elizabethan play depicting the legendary Trojan founders of the nation of England and of Troynovant . The play presents a cluster of complex and unresolved problems for scholars of English Renaissance theatre.-Date:...
    
     - Anonymous (published)

1597

• • The Isle of Dogs
    The Isle of Dogs (play)
    The Isle of Dogs is a play by Thomas Nashe and Ben Jonson which was performed in 1597. It was immediately suppressed, and no copy of it is known to exist.-The Play:...
    
     - Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe
    Thomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, playwright, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Early life:...
    
     & Ben Jonson
    Ben Jonson
    Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
    
    
  • Richard II
    Richard II (play)
    King Richard the Second is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to be written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard's...
    
     - William Shakespeare (published)

1598

• • Robert Greene - The Scottish Historie of James the Fourth (published)
  • Ben Jonson
    Ben Jonson
    Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
    
     - Every Man in His Humour
    Every Man in His Humour
    Every Man in His Humour is a 1598 play by the English playwright Ben Jonson. The play belongs to the subgenre of the "humours comedy," in which each major character is dominated by an overriding humour or obsession.-Performance and Publication:...
    
    

1599

• • Thomas Dekker - The Shoemaker's Holiday
    The Shoemaker's Holiday
    The Shoemakers' Holiday, or the Gentle Craft is an Elizabethan play written by Thomas Dekker. It was first performed in 1599 by the Admiral's Men. It falls into the sub-genre of city comedy.The play was first published in 1600 by the printer Valentine Simmes...
    
    
  • Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle
    Henry Chettle
    Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.The son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer, he was apprenticed in 1577 and became a member of the Stationer's Company in 1584, traveling to Cambridge on their behalf in 1588. His career as a printer and author is...
    
    , and William Haughton
    William Haughton
    William Haughton was an English playwright in the age of English Renaissance theatre. During the years 1597 to 1602 he collaborated in many plays with Henry Chettle, Thomas Dekker, John Day, Richard Hathwaye and Wentworth Smith....
    
     - Patient Grissel
    Patient Grissel
    Patient Grissel is a play by Thomas Dekker, Henry Chettle, and William Haughton. It was mentioned in Henslowe's diary in the entry for December 1599...
    
    
  • Ben Jonson
    Ben Jonson
    Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
    
     - Every Man Out of His Humour
    Every Man Out of His Humour
    Every Man out of His Humour is a satirical comedy written by English playwright Ben Jonson, acted in 1599 by the Lord Chamberlain's Men. It is a conceptual sequel to his 1598 comedy Every Man in His Humour...
    
    
  • William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
    
     - Henry V
    Henry V (play)
    Henry V is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to be written in approximately 1599. Its full titles are The Cronicle History of Henry the Fifth and The Life of Henry the Fifth...
    
    

New poetry

1514

• • The Aeneid -Francesco Maria Molzo's translation into Italian, in consecutive unrhymed verse (forerunner of Blank verse
    Blank verse
    Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
    
    )

1550

• • Sir Thomas Wyatt
    Thomas Wyatt (poet)
    Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English. He was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent – though his family was originally from Yorkshire...
    
     - Pentential Psalms

1557

• • Giovanni Battista Giraldi
    Giovanni Battista Giraldi
    Giovanni Battista Giraldi was an Italian novelist and poet. He appended the nickname Cinthio to his name and is commonly referred to by that name .Born at Ferrara, he was educated at the university there, and in 1525 became its professor of natural philosophy...
    
     - Ercole
  • Tottel's Miscellany
    Tottel's Miscellany
    Songes and Sonettes, usually called Tottel's Miscellany, was the first printed anthology of English poetry. It was published by Richard Tottel in 1557, and ran to many editions in the sixteenth century.-Richard Tottel:...
    
    

1562

• • The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
    The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet
    The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet is a narrative poem, first published in 1562 by Arthur Brooke, who is reported to have translated it from an Italian novella by Matteo Bandello...
    
     - Arthur Brooke

1563

• • Barnaby Googe
    Barnabe Googe
    Barnabe Googe or Gooche was a poet and translator, one of the earliest English pastoral poets.-Early life:...
    
     - Eclogues, Epitaphs, and Sonnets

1567

• • George Turberville
    George Turberville
    George Turberville, or Turbervile was an English poet, second son of Henry Turberville of Winterborne Whitechurch, Dorset, and nephew of James Turberville, Bishop of Exeter...
    
     - Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonnets

1573

• • George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...
    
     - A Hundred Sundry Flowers

1575

• • Nicholas Breton
    Nicholas Breton
    Nicholas Breton , English poet and novelist, belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex.-Life:...
    
     - A Small Handful of Fragrant Flowers
  • George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne
    George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...
    
     - The Posies

1576

• • The Paradise of Dainty Devices, the most popular of the Elizabethan verse miscellanies

1577

• • Nicholas Breton
    Nicholas Breton
    Nicholas Breton , English poet and novelist, belonged to an old family settled at Layer Breton, Essex.-Life:...
    
     - The Works of a Young Wit and A Flourish upon Fancy

1579

• • Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
    
     - The Shepherd's Calendar

1582

• • Thomas Watson
    Thomas Watson (poet)
    Thomas Watson , English lyrical poet, was the son of William Watson and Anne Lee . He was educated at Winchester College and OxfordUniversity. He then spent 7 years in France and Italy before studying law in London...
    
     - Hekatompathia or Passionate Century of Love

1590

• • Sir Philip Sidney
    Philip Sidney
    Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
    
     - Arcadia
    Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
    The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia, also known simply as the Arcadia or the Old Arcadia, is a long prose work by Sir Philip Sidney written towards the end of the sixteenth century, and later published in several versions. It is Sidney's most ambitious literary work, by far, and as significant in...
    
    
  • Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
    
     - The Faerie Queene
    The Faerie Queene
    The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
    
    , Books 1-3

1591

• • Sir Philip Sidney
    Philip Sidney
    Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
    
     - Astrophel and Stella
    Astrophel and Stella
    Likely composed in the 1580s, Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella is an English sonnet sequence containing 108 sonnets and 11 songs. The name derives from the two Greek words, 'aster' and 'phil' , and the Latin word 'stella' meaning star. Thus Astrophel is the star lover, and Stella is his star...
    
     (published posthumously)

1592

• • Henry Constable
    Henry Constable
    Henry Constable was an English poet, son of Sir Robert Constable. He went to St John's College, Cambridge, where he took his degree in 1580. Becoming a Roman Catholic, he went to Paris, and acted as anagent for the Catholic powers. He died at Liège...
    
     - Diana

1593

• Michael Drayton
  Michael Drayton
  Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
  
   - The Shepherd's Garland
  • Giles Fletcher, the Elder
    Giles Fletcher, the Elder
    Giles Fletcher, the Elder was an English poet and diplomat, member of the English Parliament.Giles Fletcher was the son of Richard Fletcher, vicar of Bishop's Stortford. He spent his early life at Cranbrook before entering Eton College about 1561...
    
     - Licia

1594

• • Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
    
     - Peirs Gaveston

1595

• • Thomas Campion
    Thomas Campion
    Thomas Campion was an English composer, poet and physician. He wrote over a hundred lute songs; masques for dancing, and an authoritative technical treatise on music.-Life:...
    
     - *Poemata

1596

• • Sir John Davies
    John Davies (poet)
    Sir John Davies was an English poet and lawyer, who became attorney general in Ireland and formulated many of the legal principles that underpinned the British Empire.-Early life:...
    
     - Orchestra, or a Poeme of Dauncing
  • Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
    
     - The Civell Warres of Edward the Second and the Barrons
  • Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser
    Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
    
     - The Faerie Queene
    The Faerie Queene
    The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
    
    , Books 1-6

1597

• • Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton
    Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
    
     - Englands Heroicall Epistles

1598

• • Lope de Vega
    Lope de Vega
    Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
    
    
    • La Arcadia
    • La Dragontea

1599

• • Sir John Davies
    John Davies (poet)
    Sir John Davies was an English poet and lawyer, who became attorney general in Ireland and formulated many of the legal principles that underpinned the British Empire.-Early life:...
    
    
    • Hymnes of Astraea
    • Nosce Teipsum
  • George Peele
    George Peele
    George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
    
     - The Love of King David and Faire Bethsabe

Births

• 1503 - Thomas Wyatt
  Thomas Wyatt (poet)
  Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English. He was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent – though his family was originally from Yorkshire...
  
  
• 1508 - Primož Trubar
  Primož Trubar
  Primož Trubar or Primož Truber was a Slovene Protestant reformer, the founder and the first superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, a consolidator of the Slovene language and the author of the first Slovene-language printed book...
  
  , author of the first printed books in the Slovene language (d. 1586)
• 1510 - Martynas Mažvydas
  Martynas Mažvydas
  Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas (1510 near Žemaičių Naumiestis (now in Šilutė district municipality) - May 21, 1563 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) was the author and the editor of the first printed book in the Lithuanian language....
  
  
• 1511 - Johannes Secundus
  Johannes Secundus
  Johannes Secundus was a New Latin poet of Dutch nationality.- Early life and education :...
  
   (d. 1535)
• 1514 - Daniele Barbaro
  Daniele Barbaro
  Daniele Matteo Alvise Barbaro was an Italian translator of, and commentator on, Vitruvius. He also had a significant ecclesiastical career, reaching the rank of Cardinal....
  
   (d. 1570)
• 1515 - Roger Ascham
  Roger Ascham
  Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education...
  
  
• 1517 - Henry Howard
  Henry Howard
  -Nobles and politicians:*Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey , English aristocrat and poet*Henry Howard, 1st Earl of Northampton , son of the Earl of Surrey*Henry Howard, 2nd Earl of Norfolk *Henry Howard, 5th Earl of Suffolk...
  
  
• 1524 - Luís de Camões
  Luís de Camões
  Luís Vaz de Camões is considered Portugal's and the Portuguese language's greatest poet. His mastery of verse has been compared to that of Shakespeare, Vondel, Homer, Virgil and Dante. He wrote a considerable amount of lyrical poetry and drama but is best remembered for his epic work Os Lusíadas...
  
   (d. 1580)
• 1547 - Miguel de Cervantes
  Miguel de Cervantes
  Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written...
  
   (d. 1616)
• 1551 - William Camden
  William Camden
  William Camden was an English antiquarian, historian, topographer, and officer of arms. He wrote the first chorographical survey of the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and the first detailed historical account of the reign of Elizabeth I of England.- Early years :Camden was born in London...
  
  
• 1554 - Philip Sidney
  Philip Sidney
  Sir Philip Sidney was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age...
  
  
• 1555 - Lancelot Andrewes
  Lancelot Andrewes
  Lancelot Andrewes was an English bishop and scholar, who held high positions in the Church of England during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth I and King James I. During the latter's reign, Andrewes served successively as Bishop of Chichester, Ely and Winchester and oversaw the translation of the...
  
  
• 1558 - Robert Greene
  Robert Greene (16th century)
  Robert Greene was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A...
  
  
• 1558 - Thomas Kyd
  Thomas Kyd
  Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
  
  
• 1561 - Luís de Góngora y Argote, Spanish poet (d. 1627)
• 1562 - Lope de Vega
  Lope de Vega
  Félix Arturo Lope de Vega y Carpio was a Spanish playwright and poet. He was one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Century Baroque literature...
  
  , Spanish poet and dramatist (d. 1635)
• 1564 - Henry Chettle
  Henry Chettle
  Henry Chettle was an English dramatist and miscellaneous writer of the Elizabethan era.The son of Robert Chettle, a London dyer, he was apprenticed in 1577 and became a member of the Stationer's Company in 1584, traveling to Cambridge on their behalf in 1588. His career as a printer and author is...
  
  , English dramatist (d. 1607)
• 1564 - Christopher Marlowe
  Christopher Marlowe
  Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...
  
  , English poet and dramatist (d. 1593)
• 1564 - William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare
  William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
  
  , English poet and dramatist (d. 1616)
• 1570 - Robert Aytoun
• 1572 - Ben Jonson
  Ben Jonson
  Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
  
  
• 1576 - John Marston
  John Marston
  John Marston was an English poet, playwright and satirist during the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods...
  
  
• 1577 - Robert Burton
  Robert Burton (scholar)
  Robert Burton was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Segrave in Leicestershire.-Life:...
  
  
• 1581 - Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft
  Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft
  Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft - Knight in the Order of Saint Michael - was a Dutch historian, poet and playwright from the period known as the Dutch Golden Age.-Life:...
  
  
• 1583 - Philip Massinger
  Philip Massinger
  Philip Massinger was an English dramatist. His finely plotted plays, including A New Way to Pay Old Debts, The City Madam and The Roman Actor, are noted for their satire and realism, and their political and social themes.-Early life:The son of Arthur Massinger or Messenger, he was baptized at St....
  
  
• 1587 - Joost van den Vondel
  Joost van den Vondel
  Joost van den Vondel was a Dutch writer and playwright. He is considered the most prominent Dutch poet and playwright of the 17th century. His plays are the ones from that period that are still most frequently performed, and his epic Joannes de Boetgezant , on the life of John the Baptist, has...
  
  
• 1594 - James Howell
  James Howell
  James Howell was a 17th-century Anglo-Welsh historian and writer who is in many ways a representative figure of his age. The son of a Welsh clergyman, he was for much of his life in the shadow of his elder brother Thomas Howell, who became Lord Bishop of Bristol.-Education:In 1613 he gained his B.A...
  
  

Deaths

• 1502 - Henry Medwall
  Henry Medwall
  Henry Medwall was the first known English vernacular dramatist. Fulgens and Lucrece , whose heroine must choose between two suitors, is the earliest known secular English play. The other play of Medwall is titled Nature. He stayed at the court of Cardinal Morton, Chancellor in the time of Henry...
  
  
• 1513 - Robert Fabyan
  Robert Fabyan
  Robert Fabyan , chronicler, was born in London, of which hebecame an Alderman and Sheriff. He kept a diary of notable events, whichhe expanded into a chronicle, which he entitled, The Concordance of Histories. It covers the period from the arrival of Brutus in England tothe death of King Henry VII...
  
  
• 1519 - Anna Bülow
  Anna Bülow
  Anna Fickesdotter , , was a Swedish writer and translator and abbess of the Bridgittine Vadstena Abbey between 1501-1519.Anna Fickesdotter Bülow was elected abbess of Vadstena convent in 1501 and held that position for eighteen years, until her death. She was active in literary matters and was...
  
  
• 1535 - Johannes Secundus
  Johannes Secundus
  Johannes Secundus was a New Latin poet of Dutch nationality.- Early life and education :...
  
   (b. 1511)
• 1542 - Thomas Wyatt
  Thomas Wyatt (poet)
  Sir Thomas Wyatt was a 16th-century English lyrical poet credited with introducing the sonnet into English. He was born at Allington Castle, near Maidstone in Kent – though his family was originally from Yorkshire...
  
  
• 1552 - Alexander Barclay
  Alexander Barclay
  Dr Alexander Barclay was an English/Scottish poet.-Biography:Barclay was born in about 1476. His place of birth is matter of dispute, but William Bulleyn, who was a native of Ely, and probably knew him when he was in the monastery there, asserts that he was born "beyonde the cold river of Twede"...
  
  
• 1553 - Hanibal Lucić
  Hanibal Lucic
  Hanibal Lucić or Annibale Lucio was a Croatian Renaissance poet and playwright.- Biography :He was born to a Croatian noble family of Antun and Goja in Hvar, where he spent most of his life. Early in his youth, he was a judge and later became a lawyer of the Hvar municipality...
  
  , Croatian poet and playwright (born c. 1485)
• 1553 - François Rabelais
  François Rabelais
  François Rabelais was a major French Renaissance writer, doctor, Renaissance humanist, monk and Greek scholar. He has historically been regarded as a writer of fantasy, satire, the grotesque, bawdy jokes and songs...
  
  
• 1555 - Polydore Vergil
  Polydore Vergil
  Polydore Vergil was an Italian historian, otherwise known as PV Castellensis. He is better known as the contemporary historian during the early Tudor dynasty. He was hired by King Henry VIII of England, who wanted to distance himself from his father Henry VII as much as possible, to document...
  
  
• 1563 - John Bale
  John Bale
  John Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
  
  
• 1563 - Martynas Mažvydas
  Martynas Mažvydas
  Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas Martynas Mažvydas (1510 near Žemaičių Naumiestis (now in Šilutė district municipality) - May 21, 1563 in Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) was the author and the editor of the first printed book in the Lithuanian language....
  
  
• 1566 - Marco Girolamo Vida
  Marco Girolamo Vida
  Marco Girolamo Vida or Marcus Hieronymus Vida was an Italian humanist, bishop and poet. Born at Cremona, Vida joined the court of Pope Leo X and was given a prior at Frascati. He became bishop of Alba in 1532....
  
  , Italian poet (b. 1485?)
• 1568 - Roger Ascham
  Roger Ascham
  Roger Ascham was an English scholar and didactic writer, famous for his prose style, his promotion of the vernacular, and his theories of education...
  
  
• 1570 - Daniele Barbaro
  Daniele Barbaro
  Daniele Matteo Alvise Barbaro was an Italian translator of, and commentator on, Vitruvius. He also had a significant ecclesiastical career, reaching the rank of Cardinal....
  
   (b. 1514)
• 1577 - George Gascoigne
  George Gascoigne
  George Gascoigne was an English poet, soldier, artist, and unsuccessful courtier. He is considered the most important poet of the early Elizabethan era, following Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and leading to the emergence of Philip Sidney...
  
  
• 1586 - Primož Trubar
  Primož Trubar
  Primož Trubar or Primož Truber was a Slovene Protestant reformer, the founder and the first superintendent of the Protestant Church of the Slovene Lands, a consolidator of the Slovene language and the author of the first Slovene-language printed book...
  
  , author of the first printed books in the Slovene language (b. 1508)
• 1592 - Robert Greene
  Robert Greene (16th century)
  Robert Greene was an English author best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit, widely believed to contain a polemic attack on William Shakespeare. He was born in Norwich and attended Cambridge University, receiving a B.A. in 1580, and an M.A...
  
  
• 1593 - Christopher Marlowe
  Christopher Marlowe
  Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...
  
  
• 1594 - Thomas Kyd
  Thomas Kyd
  Thomas Kyd was an English dramatist, the author of The Spanish Tragedy, and one of the most important figures in the development of Elizabethan drama....
  
  
• 1595 - Luis Barahona de Soto
  Luis Barahona de Soto
  Luis Barahona de Soto was a Spanish poet.Born at Lucena , he was educated at Granada, and practised as a physician at Cordoba. His major work is the Primera parte de la Angélica , a continuation of the Orlando furioso...