The most significant events in the history of books on the 8th of December
1626: John Davies dies. A minor poet who was championed in the twentieth century by T. S. Eliot, Davies was an accomplished calligrapher as well as a poet and courtier. This led Jonathan Bate, in his biography of Shakespeare, Soul of the Age, to propose the theory that Davies was the ‘rival poet’ in Shakespeare’s Sonnets.
He is credited with coining dozens of new words which are still in common use. He died on his birthday. Some of his writing was first published without his permission. His works, when first published in the seventeenth century, proved hugely successful and influential. This description could easily fit William Shakespeare, but it also fits a relatively unsung hero of literature, Sir Thomas Browne.