This article contains information about the literary events and publications of 1541.

• Late August – Siege of Buda: Ottoman Bektashi dervish poet Gül Baba, companion of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, believed killed or died during or immediately after the Ottoman relief of Buda.
• Elia Levita's chivalric romance, the Bovo-Bukh, is first printed, the earliest published secular work in Yiddish.
• unknown dates
  • The Gustav Vasa Bible, the first official translation of the entire Bible into Swedish, Biblia, Thet är All then Helgha Scrifft på Swensko, is published in Upsala.
  • The first complete translation of the New Testament into Hungarian, Újszövetség, is the first book printed in Hungary, at Sárvár.
  • John Calvin translates his Institutio Christianae religionis into French as L'Institution chrétienne.

• George Buchanan
  • Baptistes
  • Jephtha
• Joachim Sterck van Ringelbergh – Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia

• Lodovico Dolce – Il ragazzo
• Giovanni Battista Giraldi – Orbecche

• Anonymous – The Schole House of Women^[1]
• Francesco Berni (died 1535) – Orlando innamorato
• Jacques Pelletier du Mans – Ars Poetica (translation into French from Latin of Horace)^[2]

• January 26 – Florent Chrestien, French satirist and Latin poet (died 1596)

• April 24 – Celio Calcagnini, Ferraran polymath and Latin poet (born 1479)
• August
  • Gül Baba, Ottoman Bektashi dervish poet (birthdate unknown)
  • Juan de Valdés, Spanish religious writer (born 1500)
• unknown date – Giovanni Guidiccioni, Italian bishop and poet (born 1480)