1608 in poetry

Events

• Scottish poet Arthur Johnston goes to Italy to study medicine at Padua.

Works

• Henry Peacham the younger, The More the Merrier: Containing: threescore and odde haad-lesse epigrams
• Samuel Rowlands, Humors Looking Glasse
• Robert Tofte, Ariosto's Satyres (authorship is claimed by Tofte in The Blazon of Jealousie (1615) although Gervase Markham's name is on the title page)

Births

• June – Sir Richard Fanshawe (died 1666), English diplomat, translator, and poet
• December 8 – Vendela Skytte (died 1629), Swedish poet and lady of letters
• December 9 – John Milton (died 1674), English poet and writer
• December 20 (bapt.) – Sir Aston Cokayne (died 1684), English poet and playwright
• Also:
  • Menahem Lonzano (born unknown), Palestinian Masoretic and midrashic scholar, lexicographer and poet
  • Vaman Pandit (died 1695), Marathi scholar and poet of India
  • Samarth Ramdas (died 1681), Marathi saint and religious poet
  • Tukaram (died 1650), Sant (Saint) and spiritual poet during a Bhakti movement
  • Chen Zilong (died 1647), Chinese poet of the Tang School

Deaths

• February 16 – Nicolas Rapin (born 1535), French magistrate, royal officer, translator, poet and satirist
• February 26 – Sir Thomas Craig (born c. 1538), Scottish jurist and poet
• April 19 – Thomas Sackville, 1st Earl of Dorset (born 1536), English statesman and poet
• July 26 – Pablo de Céspedes (born 1538), Spanish painter, poet and architect
• September – Mary Shakespeare, née Arden (born c. 1537), mother of English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare
• October 26 – Philipp Nicolai (born 1556), German poet and composer
• Also:
  • George Bannatyne (born 1545), Scottish collector of poems
  • Henry Lok (born c. 1553), English
  • Nicolas de Montreux (born c 1561), French nobleman, novelist, poet, translator and dramatist
  • Jean Vauquelin de la Fresnaye (born 1536), French
  • Andrzej Zbylitowski (born 1565), Polish

Notes

References

1. (2004). "The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature". Oxford University Press.
2. Preminger, Alex and T. V. F. Brogan, et al., ''The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'', 1993. New York: MJF Books/Fine Communications