1561 in literature

Events

• August 21 – The Peresopnytsia Gospels are completed.
• September – Serbian Orthodox hieromonks Jovan Maleševac and Matija Popović begin to collaborate with the Protestant reformer Primož Trubar on printing the New Testament and other religious books in Cyrillic letters, at Urach in Germany.
• unknown dates
• *William Baldwin's Beware the Cat, written in 1553, is first published anonymously in London. It is an early example of extended fiction in English, but it appears to have been suppressed and no copies survive.
• *The Tian Yi Ge library in Ningbo is established by Fan Qin in Ming dynasty China.

New books

Prose

• John Calvin – Institution of the Christian Religion
• Bartolomé de las Casas – History of the Indies
• Gabriele Fallopius – Observationes anatomicae
• Francesco Guicciardini – Storia d'Italia
• Sir Thomas Hoby – The Book of the Courtier
• Julius Caesar Scaliger – ''Poetices''

Drama

• Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville – ''Gorboduc''

Poetry

• ''See 1561 in poetry''

Births

• January 22 – Sir Francis Bacon, English philosopher, scientist and statesman
• June – Samuel Harsnett, English religious writer and archbishop
• July 11 – Luís de Góngora y Argote, Spanish poet
• August 14 – Sir Christopher Heydon, English writer on astrology
• October 27 – Mary Sidney, English poet and translator
• unknown dates
• *Gaspar Aguilar, Spanish poet and dramatist
• *Bernardo de Balbuena, Spanish-born Latin American poet

Deaths

• February 26 – Jorge de Montemayor, Portuguese novelist and poet
• March 19 – Lady Jane Seymour, English writer
• March 25 – Conrad Lycosthenes, Alsatian humanist and encyclopedist
• July 5 – Ambrosius Pelargus, German theologian
• October 21 – Johannes Vasaeus, Flemish teacher and historian
• October 28 – Jakob Beurlin, German Lutheran theologian
• December 10 – Caspar Schwenckfeld, German theologian and preacher
• unknown dates
• *Marie Dentière, Genevan theologian
• *Claude Garamond, French publisher