1542 in literature

• The diary begun by Luca Landucci is completed by an unknown hand."A Florentine Tradesman's Diary", The Saturday Review, collected in The Living Age ..., ed. Eliakim Littell and Robert S. Littell, pub. Littell, Son & Company, 1884, pp. 52–53.
• The earliest written example of the Romani language appears.{{cite book |last=Matras |first=Yaron |year=2002 |title=Romani: A Linguistic Introduction |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-02330-0}}

• Paul Fagius – Liber Fidei seu Veritatis
• Edward Hall – The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrate Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke

• See 1542 in poetry

• December – Catherine Des Roches, French poet and writer (died 1587)
• unknown date – John of the Cross (Juan de Yepes y Álvarez), Castilian poet and friar (died 1591)

• January 10 – Gerard Geldenhouwer, Dutch historian (born 1482){{cite book|author1=Peter G. Bietenholz|author2=Thomas Brian Deutscher|title=Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hruQ386SfFcC&pg=RA1-PA82|date=1 January 2003|publisher=University of Toronto Press|isbn=978-0-8020-8577-1|pages=82}}
• June 14 – Christoph von Scheurl, German humanist writer (born 1481){{cite book|title=Apocrypha|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fhxVAAAAYAAJ|year=1998|publisher=Brepols|isbn=978-2-503-50630-2|page=135}}
• October 11 – Sir Thomas Wyatt, English poet (born 1503){{cite book |last=Lindsey |first=Karen |title=Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII |publisher=Da Capo Press |year=1996 |isbn=978-0-201-40823-2}}
• unknown date – Lucas Fernández, Spanish dramatist and musician, who wrote in the Leonese language (born c. 1474)

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