Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).

Events

• May–December – Lope de Vega serves in the Spanish Armada, where he begins writing his epic poem La Hermosura de Angélica.
• Christopher Marlowe writes The Passionate Shepherd to His Love either this year or in 1589 (first published 1599).

Works published

Great Britain

• William Byrd, editor, Psalmes, Sonets, & Songs of Sadnes and Pietie, Made into Musicke of Five Parts, anthology of verse set to music^[1]
• Thomas Churchyard, The Worthines of Wales, prose and poetry^[1]
• Angel Day, Daphnis and Chloe, prose and poetry, translated from the French of Jacques Amyot^[1]

Other

• Jean de Sponde, Essai de poemès chrétiens, published with a collection of prose meditations on four Psalms; France^[2]

Births

• June 11 – George Wither (died 1667), English poet and satirist
• Guillaume Bautru (died 1665), French satirical poet and a founder member of the Académie française
• Richard Brathwait (died 1673), English poet
• Leonard Digges (died 1635), English translator and poet
• Josua Stegmann (died 1632), German poet

Deaths

• June 18 – Robert Crowley (born 1517), English stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman
• November 1 – Jean Daurat also spelled "Jean Dorat"; Latin name: "Auratus" (born 1508), French poet and scholar, member of the Pléiade
• Louis Bellaud (born 1543), French Occitan language writer and poet