1596 in literature

This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1596. Events January 20 – The first complete edition of The Faerie Queene is published in six books. February – James Burbage buys the disused Blackfriars Theatre from Sir William More for £600, but is prevented from using it for theater by the opposition of wealthy influential neighbors. June 22 – Lord Hunsdon dies; his place as Lord Chamberlain will be taken by William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham, who is sympathetic to the Puritans and hostile to the English Renaissance theatre. With Cobham's allowance, Thomas Skinner, Lord Mayor of the City of London bans players from the City and tears down several inn-yard theatres: the Bel Savage Inn, the Cross Keys Inn, and others. Cobham dies the next year, 1597. July – English forces under Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, returning from the Capture of Cádiz, burn Faro, Portugal, but seize books from the library of scholar Fernando Martins Mascarenhas, Bishop of Faro, which will be transferred to the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford. date unknown – The novel Jin Ping Mei (金瓶梅, The Plum in the Golden Vase) by "Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng" circulates in manuscript in China. New books Prose Thomas Harriot – Brief and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia Richard Johnson – The Famous Historie of the Seaven Champions of Christendom Thomas Nashe – Have with You to Saffron-Walden