1540 in literature

List of years in literature (table)
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in 1540.

Events

• The first known book from the first printing press in North America, set up in Mexico City, is published, Manual de Adultos.^[1]
• Sir David Lyndsay's Middle Scots satirical morality play A Satire of the Three Estates first performed, privately.
• Klemens Janicki is appointed poeta laureatus by Pope Paul III.
• Lazare de Baif travels with Pierre de Ronsard to Alsace where they meet many northern humanists.^[2]

New books

De partu hominis

• Amadis de Gaula of Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo Book 1 translated into French by Nicolas de Herberay des Essarts at the special request of Francis I of France
• Historia Scotorum of Hector Boece translated into vernacular Scots by John Bellenden at the special request of James V of Scotland
• The Byrth of Mankynde, a translation attributed to Richard Jonas from Rösslin's De partu hominis, the first printed book in English on obstetrics and one of the first published in England to include engraved plates^[3]
• De libris revolutionum Copernici narratio prima, Georg Joachim Rheticus' abstract of Copernicus' as yet unpublished De revolutionibus orbium coelestium and the first printed publication of Copernican heliocentrism (printed in Danzig)

Poetry

• Tontada Siddhesavara - Shatsthala Jnanamrita^[4]
• Souterliedekens (Dutch metrical psalter), dedicated to and perhaps compiled by Willem van Zuylen van Nijevelt
• Approximate date
  • Sir Thomas More - Lady Fortune^[5]
  • Girolamo Schola - Capituli di M. Girolamo Schola sopra varii suggetti^[6]

Births

• January 26 – Florent Chrestien, French satirist and Latin poet (died 1596)
• June 11 – Barnabe Googe, English pastoral poet and translator (died 1594)
• Unknown dates
  • Pierre de Bourdeille, seigneur de Brantôme, French soldier, historian and poet (died 1614)
  • Rhys Cain, Welsh-language poet (died 1614)
  • Frei Agostinho da Cruz (brother of Diogo Bernardes), Portuguese poet (died 1619)^[7]
  • Mathias Holtzwart, German poet (died after 1589)

Deaths

• October 5 – Helius Eobanus Hessus, German Latin poet (born 1488)

In literature

• Ford Madox Ford's novel sequence The Fifth Queen (1906–08) is set around this date.

References

1. "The Press in Colonial America" (PDF). A Publisher’s History of American Magazines — Background and Beginnings. Retrieved 2013-08-22.
2. Weinberg, Bernard, ed. (1974). "Pierre de Ronsard". French Poetry of the Renaissance (5th ed.). Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press. p. 70. ISBN 0-8093-0135-0.
3. Ballantyne, J. W. (October 1906). "The Byrth of Mankynde (Its Author and Editions)". The Journal of Obstetrics and Gynæcology of the British Empire 10 (4): 297–325. doi:10.1111/j.1471-0528.1906.tb12722.x. Retrieved 2012-02-06.
4. Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta (2002) [1955]. A history of South India from prehistoric times to the fall of Vijayanagar. New Delhi: Indian Branch, Oxford University Press. p. 362. ISBN 0-19-560686-8.
5. Cox, Michael, ed. (2004). The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-860634-6.
6. "Poems on everyday things". Oxford: Bodleian Library. Archived from the original on 2009-07-22. Retrieved 2008-06-20.
7. Preminger, Alex, Brogan, T. V. F.; et al. (1993). The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics. New York: MJF Books/Fine Communications.