William Caxton (1422-1491)

The first English printer, who, as a printer and translator, exerted an enormous influence on English literature.

Caxton was originally apprenticed to a mercer, Robert Large, who later became lord mayor of London. In 1441 Caxton moved to Bruges, the central foreign market of the Anglo Flemish wool trade. Caxton became an increasingly prosperous member of the English trading community in Flanders. By 1463 he was the Governor of the English Nation of Merchant Adventurers in the Low Countries, a position that gave him real authority over his fellow traders. When Margaret of York married Charles the Rash of Burgundy, Caxton entered her household, probably as her financial advisor.

By this time Caxton’s interests had turned to literature. In 1469 he had started to translate Raoul Le Fevre’s Recueil des histories de Troye. In 1471 he went to Cologne, and there learned the art of printing. Apparently his hand became weary and his eye dimmed from copying his translation of Recueil, so he learnt, at great personal cost, to print it.

Caxton set up a press in Bruges in 1474 and The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, the first book printed in English, was published there in 1474. He printed a few other works in English at Bruges, but in 1476 he returned to England to set up a press at Westminster. He now devoted himself entirely to writing and printing. The first dated book printed in English Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, appeared on 18 November 1477.

Caxton was patronised by nobles and rich merchants. His output included chivalric romances, books of history, philiosophy and morality, an encyclopaedia, The Myrrour of the World, in 1481, and a large number of service books and devotional works, which were the staple reading of most literate persons. He also printed nearly all the English literature available to him, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur. By the time of his death, Caxton had translated 24 books and published about 100 items.