1595 in literature
This article is a summary of the literary events and publications of 1595.
Events
- May 24 – The Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears as the first printed catalog of an institutional library.
- December 9 – Shakespeare's Richard II is possibly acted privately at the Canon Row house of Sir Edward Hoby, with Sir Robert Cecil attending.
- unknown dates
- *The first part of Ginés Pérez de Hita's Historia de los bandos de los Zegríes y Abencerrajes appears. Supposedly a chronicle of the Morisco rebellions in Granada based on an Arabic original, it is probably the earliest historical novel and certainly the first to gain popularity.
- *Lope de Vega leaves the service of the Duke of Alba and returns to Madrid, after the death of his first wife Isabel in the previous year.
New books
Prose
- Mikalojus Daukša – Kathechismas, arba Mokslas kiekvienam krikščioniui privalus
- Justus Lipsius – De militia romana
- Nicholas Remy – Daemonolatreiae libri tres
- Sir Philip Sidney – An Apology for Poetry
- Vincentio Saviolo – His practise, in two bookes.
- Fausto Veranzio – Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europæ linguarum, Latinæ, Italicæ, Germanicæ, Dalmatiæ, & Vngaricæ published in Latin in Venice
- Joseph of Anchieta – Arte de gramática da língua mais usada na costa do Brasil
- Anonymous – ''Disputatio nova contra mulieres''
Drama
- Anonymous – Locrine
- Jakob Ayrer – Von der Erbauung Roms
- Gervase Markham – The Most Honorable Tragedy of Sir Richard Grinville
- Antoine de Montchrestien – Sophonisbe
- Robert Wilson? – The Pedlers Prophecie
- Approximate year
- *William Alabaster, Roxana
- *William Shakespeare, Richard II
- **Romeo and Juliet
- **''A Midsummer Night's Dream''
Poetry
- Barnabe Barnes – A Divine Century of Spiritual Sonnets
- Richard Barnfield – Cynthia
- Thomas Campion – Poemata
- George Chapman – Ovid's Banquet of Sense
- Gervase Markham – The Poem of Poems, or Syon's Muse
- Robert Southwell – Saint Peter's Complaint
- Edmund Spenser
- *Amoretti and Epithalamion
- *''Colin Clouts Come Home Againe''
Births
- March 21 – Ferdinando Ughelli, Italian church historian
- before June – Thomas Carew, English poet
- October 18 – Edward Winslow, English theologian, pamphleteer and New England politician
- December 4 – Jean Chapelain, French poet and critic
- Unknown dates
- *Bihari Lal, Hindi poet
- *Jean Desmarets, French writer and dramatist
- *Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Spanish Jesuit writer and mystic
Deaths
- February – William Painter, English translator
- February 21 – Robert Southwell, English poet and Catholic martyr
- March 18 – Jean de Sponde, French poet
- April 25 – Torquato Tasso, Italian poet
- May 25 – Valens Acidalius, German poet and critic writing in Latin
- June 23 – Louis Carrion, Flemish scholar
- October 5 – Faizi, Indian poet and scholar
- November 5 – Luis Barahona de Soto, Spanish poet 1548)