1595 in literature

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

  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
• *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)