1609 in literature

The year 1609 in literature involved some significant events.

Events

• January 1 – the Children of the Blackfriars perform Middleton's A Trick to Catch the Old One at Court.
• July 28 – The Sea Venture is wrecked in Bermuda – this event is thought to be the inspiration for Shakespeare's The Tempest.
• 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.
• Samuel Daniel completes the eighth and last book of his epic poem, Civil Wars.
• Jacques Auguste de Thou's Historia sui temporis is placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
• The Sala Fredericiana, the first reading room of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, opens to the public.
• Francis Tregian the Younger is imprisoned for his Catholic sympathies, and begins copying out the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book.

New books

• Douai Bible
• 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
• Thomas Middleton
  • Sir Robert Sherley his Entertainment in Cracovia (translation)
  • The Two Gates of Salvation
• Thomas Dekker – Four Birds of Noah's Ark and The Gull's Hornbook
• Thomas Rowlands – A Whole Crew of Kind Gossips
• William Rowley – A Search for Money
• St. Francis de Sales - Introduction à la vie dévote
• Wang Qi & Wang Siyi - Sancai Tuhui

New drama

• Anonymous – Every Woman in Her Humour (published)
• Robert Armin – The Italian Tailor and his Boy (published)
• Fulke Greville – Mustapha (published)
• Ben Jonson (and collaborators?) – The Case is Altered (published)
• William Shakespeare – Pericles, Prince of Tyre and Troilus and Cressida (published)

New poetry

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

Births

• February 10 – Sir John Suckling, poet (died 1642)
• February 18 – Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, historian (died 1674)
• August 19 – Jean Rotrou, dramatist (died 1650)
• October 5 – Paul Fleming, poet (died 1640)
• December 24 – Philip Warwick, politician and memoirist (died 1683)
• date unknown – Gerrard Winstanley, political writer (died 1676)
• probable – Gauthier de Costes, seigneur de la Calprenède, novelist and dramatist (died 1663)

Deaths

• January 21 – Joseph Justus Scaliger, French Protestant writer (born 1540)
• March 9 – William Warner, poet (born c. 1558)
• August 22 – Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Jewish mystic and philosopher (born 1525)
• October 19 – Jacobus Arminius, theologian (born 1560)
• December 4 – Alexander Hume, poet (born c. 1560)
• December – Barnabe Barnes, poet (born c. 1568)
• probable – Mateo Alemán, Spanish novelist and man of letters (born 1547)