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 (Guerras civiles de Granada) 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.

Prose

 * Mikalojus Daukša – Kathechismas, arba Mokslas kiekvienam krikščioniui privalus
 * Justus Lipsius – De militia romana
 * Nicholas Remy – Daemonolatreiae libri tres
 * Sir Philip Sidney (posthumous, written 1580–83) – An Apology for Poetry
 * Vincentio Saviolo – His practise, in two bookes. (first manual of fencing in English)
 * Fausto Veranzio – Dictionarium quinque nobilissimarum Europæ linguarum, Latinæ, Italicæ, Germanicæ, Dalmatiæ, & Vngaricæ published in Latin in Venice

Drama

 * Anonymous – Locrine (published claiming to be revised by "W. S.")
 * Jakob Ayrer – Von der Erbauung Roms (Of the Building of Rome)
 * 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 (anonymous) – Ovid's Banquet of Sense
 * Gervase Markham – The Poem of Poems, or Syon's Muse
 * Robert Southwell (anonymous) – Saint Peter's Complaint
 * Edmund Spenser
 * Amoretti and Epithalamion ("written not long since")
 * Colin Clouts Come Home Againe

Births

 * March 21 – Ferdinando Ughelli, Italian church historian (died 1670)
 * before June – Thomas Carew, English poet (died 1640)
 * October 18 – Edward Winslow, English theologian, pamphleteer and New England politician (died 1655)
 * December 4 – Jean Chapelain, French poet and critic (died 1674)
 * Unknown dates
 * Bihari Lal, Hindi poet (died 1663)
 * Jean Desmarets, French writer and dramatist (died 1676)
 * Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Spanish Jesuit writer and mystic (died 1658)

Deaths

 * February – William Painter, English translator (born c. 1540)
 * February 21 – Robert Southwell, English poet and Catholic martyr (born c. 1561)
 * March 18 – Jean de Sponde, French poet (born 1557)
 * April 25 – Torquato Tasso, Italian poet (born 1544)
 * May 25 – Valens Acidalius, German poet and critic writing in Latin (born 1567)
 * June 23 – Louis Carrion, Flemish scholar (born 1547)
 * October 5 – Faizi, Indian poet and scholar (born 1547)
 * November 5 – Luis Barahona de Soto, Spanish poet 1548)