1609 in literature

Events

• January 1 – The Children of the Blackfriars perform Thomas Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One at the English royal court.
• January 15 – Avisa Relation oder Zeitung, an early newspaper, begins publication in Wolfenbüttel.
• May 20 – The London publisher Thomas Thorpe issues Shake-speares Sonnets, with a dedication to "Mr. W. H.", and the poem A Lover's Complaint appended. It is unclear whether this had Shakespeare's authority.
• July 28 – The Sea Venture is wrecked in Bermuda – an event thought to have been an inspiration for Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
• October 12 – A version of the rhyme "Three Blind Mice" appears in Deuteromelia or The Seconde part of Musicks melodie. The editor and possible author of the verse is the teenage Thomas Ravenscroft.
• December 8 – The Sala Fredericiana, the first reading room of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, opens. It is one of the first major libraries to have bookshelves ranged along the walls.
• December 21 – William Ames delivers a controversial sermon for St Thomas's Day criticizing the "heathenish debauchery" of Cambridge students during the Twelve Days of Christmas.
• December 24 – John Marston, having retired from writing for the theater, is ordained a priest.
• c. December – Ben Jonson's comedy Epicœne, or The silent woman is premièred at the Whitefriars Theatre in London by the Children of the Queen's Revels led by Nathan Field.
• unknown date – Jacques Auguste de Thou's Historia sui temporis is placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.

  New books

Prose

• Douay-Rheims Bible
• Charles Butler – The Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees
• Thomas Dekker
• *Four Birds of Noah's Ark
• *The Gull's Hornbook
• Inca Garcilaso de la Vega – Comentarios Reales de los Incas
• Edward Grimeston – A General History of the Netherlands
• Hugo Grotius – Mare liberum
• Johannes Kepler – Astronomia nova
• Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola – Conquista de las Islas Molucas
• Marc Lescarbot – Histoire de la Nouvelle-France
• Thomas Middleton
• *Sir Robert Sherley his Entertainment in Cracovia
• *The Two Gates of Salvation
• William Rowley – A Search for Money
• St. Francis de Sales – Introduction à la vie dévote
• Wang Qi and Wang Siyi – Sancai Tuhui

  Drama

• Anonymous – Every Woman in Her Humour
• Robert Armin
• *The History of the Two Maids of More-clacke
• *The Italian Tailor and his Boy
• Fulke Greville – Mustapha
• Ben Jonson
• * – The Case is Altered
• *Epicœne, or The silent woman
• William Shakespeare
• *Pericles, Prince of Tyre
• *Troilus and Cressida

  Poetry

• Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo – La Patrona de Madrid restituida
• Samuel Daniel – Civil Wars
• William Shakespeare – The Sonnets and A Lover's Complaint

  Births

• February 10 – Sir John Suckling, English poet
• February 18 – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, English historian
• August 19 – Jean Rotrou, French poet and dramatist
• October 5 – Paul Fleming, German poet
• October 19 – Gerrard Winstanley, English religious and political writer
• December 24 – Philip Warwick, English politician and memoirist
• unknown date – Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède, French novelist and dramatist
• probable – Barbara Blaugdone, English Quaker autobiographer

  Deaths

• January 21 – Joseph Justus Scaliger, French Protestant writer
• March 9 – William Warner, English poet
• August 22 – Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Jewish mystic and philosopher
• October 19 – Jacobus Arminius, Dutch theologian
• December 4 – Alexander Hume, Scottish poet
• December – Barnabe Barnes, English poet