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This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1581.

Events

January – Francis Bacon takes his seat as an MP in the Parliament of England for the Cornish pocket borough of Bossiney.
June 24 – Torquato Tasso's epic poem Jerusalem Delivered (La Gerusalemme liberata) is first published complete, a pirated edition printed in Parma being followed by an authorized edition from Ferrara, where the poet is confined in the Ospedale di Sant'Anna.^[1]^[2] Also this year, Aldus Manutius the Younger prints a selection of Tasso's lyrics and prose in Venice.

Uncertain dates

Stationer Thomas Marsh publishes Seneca's Tragedies in English, a collected edition of ten dramas written by Seneca the Younger (or attributed to him), translated by Jasper Heywood, John Studley, Alexander Neville, Thomas Newton, and Thomas Nuce. Most of the texts have been printed previously, from 1559 onward; but Newton's version of Thebais is new, and earlier printed texts of Studley's versions of Hercules Oetaeus and Hippolytus, if they ever existed, have not survived.^[3]
John Dee starts to write Libri mysteriorum I-XVIII (Spiritual Diaries).
First record of bookselling at No. 1, Trinity Street, Cambridge, England; it will continue to be a bookshop for at least 430 years.^[4]

New books

Church of Scotland – The Second Book of Discipline<ref=>John Hill Burton (1873). The History of Scotland from Agricola's Invasion to the Extinction of the Last Jacobite Insurrection. W. Blackwood and Sons. p. 203.</ref>
William Lambarde – Eirenarcha: or of the Office of the Justices of Peace
Ostrog Bible
Barnabe Riche – Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession conteining verie pleasaunt discourses fit for a peaceable tyme

January 4 – James Ussher, Anglo-Irish archbishop and scholar (died 1656)
March 16 – Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, Dutch Golden Age writer (died 1647)
June 18 (date of baptism) – Thomas Overbury, English poet and essayist (died 1613)
August 15 – Jeremias Drexel, German Jesuit writer (died 1638)
November 11 (date of baptism) – Henry Adamson, Scottish poet and historian (died 1637)

Uncertain dates

Probable year

Uncertain dates