1531 in literature

Events

• unknown dates
• *The first emblem book appears, the Emblemata , an unauthorized issue by the printer Heinrich Steyner in Augsburg, Bavaria, of Italian jurist Andrea Alciato's privately circulated Latin verses, accompanied by woodcuts.
• *Petrarch's poetry Trionfi is first translated into French as Les Triomphes.

  New books

Prose

• Henry Cornelius Agrippa – De occulta philosophia libri tres, Book One
• Andrea Alciato – Emblemata
• Sir Thomas Elyot – The Boke Named the Governour
• Niccolò Machiavelli – Discourses on Livy
• Paracelsus – Opus Paramirum
• Michael Servetus – De trinitatis erroribus
• William Turner –

  Drama

• Accademia degli Intronati – Gl' Ingannati

  Poetry

• Marguerite de Navarre – Le Miroir de l'ame Pecheresse
• Approximate date – John Skelton – Colin Clout

  Births

• June 1 – János Zsámboky, Hungarian humanist scholar
• October 7 – Scipione Ammirato, Italian historian
• November 29 – Johannes Letzner, German historian
• Unknown date – Ercole Bottrigari, Italian poet, music theorist and publisher

  Deaths

• October 11 – Huldrych Zwingli, Swiss theologian
• probable – Fernan Perez de Oliva, Spanish linguist