The first name on the list of early English printers, it is hardly necessary to say, is that of Caxton. In his Life and Typography of William Caxton, the late Mr Blades has told all there is to be known of Caxton's life, and a great deal about Caxton's work; and although as regards the latter half of the subject there are authorities who dissent from some of the theories he advances, Mr Blades' monograph remains the standard work on the matter of England's first printer and the recognised source of information concerning him and his books.

But notwithstanding Mr Blades' industry and learning, our knowledge of the early part of Caxton's life is very scanty, and is derived mainly from what Caxton himself tells us in the prologue to his first literary production, the English translation of the French romance by Le Fevre, entitled Le Recueil des Histoires de Troyes, or, Anglicised, The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye. Speaking of his boldness in undertaking the work, he refers to the “symplenes and vnperfightness that I had in both langages, that is to wete in frenshe and in englissh, for in france was I neuer, and was born & lerned myn englissh in kente in the weeld where I doubte not is spoken as brode and rude englissh as is in ony place of englond.” He was born probably in 1422 or 1423, and further than this we know nothing of him till his apprenticeship to Robert Large, a London mercer. Large died before Caxton's term of apprenticeship expired, and the next we hear of young Caxton is that he was living on the Continent, probably at Bruges. At the time he wrote the prologue from which quotation has just been made, that is about 1475, he had been for thirty years “for the most parte in the contres of Braband, flanders, holand, and zeland.” Yet notwithstanding so long a residence in the Low Countries, he describes himself as “mercer of y^e cyte of London.”

As a wool merchant in Bruges he prospered, and in time rose to be Governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers, or “The English Nation,” and in that capacity probably dwelt at the Domus AngliÆ, the Company's headquarters in Bruges. In 1468, and while holding this honourable and important position, he began his translation of Le Recueil, but soon laid it aside, unfinished. Two years later he took it up again, but by this time he had resigned the governorship, and was engaged in the service of the Duchess of Burgundy, sister of EdwardIV. of England. When or why he took this position, and in what capacity he served the Duchess, is not known, but it was her influence which brought about the completion of his literary work and indirectly caused the subsequent metamorphosis of the mercer into the typographer. In the prologue to The Recuyell he relates that the duchess commanded him to finish the translation which he had begun, and this lady's “dredefull comadement,” he says, “y durste in no wyse disobey because y am a servat vnto her sayde grace and resseiue of her yerly ffee and other many goode and grete benefetes.”

The Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, when finished, immediately found favour in the eyes of the English dwellers in Bruges, who, rejoiced to have the favourite romance of the day in their own tongue, demanded more copies than one pair of hands could supply. So because of the weariness and labour of writing, and because of his promise to various friends to provide them with the book, “I haue practysed & lerned,” he tells us, “at my grete charge and dispense, to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner & forme as ye may here see, and is not wreton with penne and ynke, as other bokes ben, to thende that every man may haue them attones.”

Where Caxton gained his knowledge of printing is a matter of dispute. Mr Blades holds that he was taught by Colard Mansion, the first printer of Bruges, others that he learned at Cologne. Mr Blades adduces in support of his view the similarity of the types of Mansion and Caxton, the reproduction in Caxton's work of various peculiarities to be observed in Mansion's, the improbability that Caxton would have travelled to Cologne to get what was already at hand in the city where he lived, and the absence in his work “of any typographical link between him and the Mentz school.” For the Cologne theory Wynkyn de Worde, who carried on the work of Caxton's printing-office at Westminster after the latter's death, supplies some foundation in his edition of BartholomÆus De Proprietatibus Rerum, where he says:

As usual there is something to be said on both sides, but leaving this debateable ground we will only add that the Recuyell of the Histories of Troye, translated by himself from the French, is generally considered to be the first book printed by Caxton, perhaps with Mansion's help, and probably at Bruges, and in or about the year 1475. It is also the first printed book in English. It was followed about 1476 by the French version of the same work, and by the famous Game and Play of the Chesse Moralised. This was once believed to be the first book printed on English soil, but it is now assigned to Caxton's press on the Continent, probably at Bruges.

About 1476 Caxton returned to England, and set up his press at Westminster. It has been asserted that he worked in the scriptorium, but it is not known that Westminster Abbey ever had a scriptorium. Others have thought that he printed in some other part of the Abbey. His office, however, was situated in the Almonry, in the Abbey precincts, and was called the Red Pale, but it is now impossible to identify the place where it stood. In 1477 Caxton produced The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres, the first book, so far as is known, ever printed in England.

The Westminster printer was patronised by the king and by the mighty of the land, and also by the Duchess of Burgundy, and with his pen, as well as with his press, he sought to supply the books and literature which the taste of the time demanded. “The clergy wanted service-books,” says Mr Blades, “and Caxton accordingly provided them with psalters, commemorations and directories; the preachers wanted sermons, and were supplied with the ‘Golden Legend,’ and other similar books; the ‘prynces, lordes, barons, knyghtes & gentilmen’ were craving for ‘joyous and pleysaunt historyes’ of chivalry, and the press at the ‘Red Pale’ produced a fresh romance nearly every year.” From his arrival at Westminster about 1476 until his death about 1491—the date is not exactly known—Caxton was continually occupied in translating, editing, and printing, though beyond the prologues, epilogues, and colophons to his various publications he composed little himself, his principal work being the addition of a book to Higden's Polychronicon, bringing that history down to 1460. His translations number twenty-two.

The long list of his printed works includes a HorÆ, printed about 1478, and now represented only by a fragment, which is of great interest as being probably the earliest English-printed service-book extant. It was found in the cover of another old book, and is now in the Bodleian Library.

Other books printed by Caxton were the Canterbury Tales; Boethius; Parvus et Magnus Catho, a mediÆval school-book, the third edition of which contains two woodcuts, probably the earliest produced in England; The Historye of Reynart the Foxe, translated from the Dutch by Caxton; A Book of the Chesse Moralysed, a second edition of the Game and Play of the Chesse, printed by Caxton abroad; The Cronicles of Englond; The Pylgremage of the Sowle, believed to have been translated from the French by Lydgate; Gower's Confessio Amantis; The Knyght of the Toure, translated by Caxton from the French; The Golden Legend, consisting of lives of saints compiled by Caxton from French and Latin texts; The Fables of Esope, etc., translated by Caxton from the French; Chaucer's Book of Fame; Troylus and Creside; Malory's Morte d'Arthur; The Book of Good Manners, translated by Caxton from the French of Jacques Legrand; Statutes of HenryVII., in English, the “earliest known volume of printed statutes”; The Governal of Helthe, from the Latin, author and translator unknown, the “earliest medical work printed in English”; Divers Ghostly Matters, including tracts on the seven points of true love and everlasting wisdom, the Twelve Profits of Tribulation, and the Rule of St Benet; The Fifteen Oes and other Prayers, printed by command of “our liege ladi Elizabeth … Quene of Englonde, and of the … pryncesse Margarete,” and the “prouffytable boke for manes soule and right comfortable to the body and specyally in aduersitee and trybulacyon, whiche boke is called The Chastysing of Goddes Chyldern.”

Between seventy and eighty different books, besides indulgences and other small productions, are attributed to Caxton's press, and the works just named will serve to give an idea of their diversity and range. Some of the most popular were printed more than once; of the Golden Legend, for example, three editions are known, and of the Dictes or Sayings, the HorÆ, and Parvus et Magnus Catho, and several others, two editions are known. There is also a strong probability that many of Caxton's productions have been lost altogether, since thirty-eight of those yet extant are represented either by single copies or by fragments.

Caxton, according to Mr Blades, used six different founts of Gothic type, but Mr E. Gordon Duff, in his Early English Printing, credits him with eight founts. His books are all printed on paper, with the exception of a copy of the Speculum VitÆ Christi in the British Museum, and one of the Doctrinal of Sapyence, in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.

The well-known device of Caxton was not used by him till 1487. It is usually understood to stand for W.C. 74, but its exact meaning is not known. Blades believes that it refers to the date of printing of The Recuyell, the first product of Caxton's typographical skill.

In 1480, three or four years after Caxton had settled at Westminster, John Lettou, a foreigner of whom little is known, established the first London printing-press.[4] His workmanship was particularly good, and he was the first in this country to print two columns to the page. He subsequently took into partnership William de Machlinia, and according to the colophon of their Tenores Novelli the office of these two printers was located in the Church of All Saints', but this piece of information is too vague to assist in the identification of the spot. Machlinia is afterwards found working alone in an office near the Flete Bridge. His later books were printed in Holborn.

A well-known name is that of Wynkyn de Worde, a native of Holland, and at one time assistant to Caxton. At Caxton's death he became master of the Red Pale, and issued a number of books “from Caxton's house in Westminster,” including reprints of several of Caxton's publications. He made use of some modified forms of Caxton's device, but he also had a device of his own, which first appears in the Book of Courtesye printed some time before 1493. He printed, among other works, the Golden Legend, the Book of Courtesye, Bonaventura's Speculum VitÆ Christi, Higden's Polychronicon, which appeared in 1495 and is the first English book with printed musical notes; BartholomÆus' De Proprietatibus Rerum, which appeared about 1495 and is the first book printed on English-made paper, and which has already been noticed as the authority for supposing that Caxton learned printing at Cologne; the Boke of St Albans, the Chronicles of England, Morte D'Arthur, The Canterbury Tales, etc., etc. He also issued a host of sermons, almanacs, and other minor works.

In 1500 Wynkyn de Worde moved from Caxton's house in Westminster to the Sign of the Sun, in Fleet Street, and presently opened another place of business at the Sign of Our Lady of Pity, in St Paul's Churchyard.

About a year after Caxton had established himself at the Red Pale, and had issued the Dictes or Sayengis, and two years before the city of London had attained to the dignity of a printing-press, typography began to be practised at Oxford, but by whom is not known, though very possibly by Theodore Rood of Cologne. The first Oxford book was the Exposicio in Simbolum Apostolorum of St Jerome, a work which happens to be dated 1468, and has thereby led some to assign to Oxford the credit of having printed the first book in this country. But that date is now acknowledged to be a printer's error for 1478. A similar misprint led to a similar error as to the first book printed in Venice. The Decor Puellarum, executed by Nicolas Jenson, purports to have appeared in 1461, and thus was at one time supposed to be the first book printed in Venice, but the date is now recognised as a misprint for 1471, which leaves John of Spires the first Venetian printer and his EpistolÆ familiares of Cicero, 1469, the first Venetian printed book.

Cambridge was more than forty years later than Oxford in providing herself with a printing-press.

In the same year that London began to print appeared the first books from the press at the Abbey of St Albans, namely, Augustini Dacti elegancie, and the Nova Rhetorica of Saona. As both were printed in 1480 it is uncertain which is the earlier. This press was probably started in 1479, but of the printer nothing is known, except that when Wynkyn de Worde reprinted the Chronicles of England from a copy printed at St Albans, he refers to him as the St Albans “scole mayster.” The famous Bokys of Haukyng and Huntyng, and also of Cootarmuris, commonly known as the Book of St Albans, written by the accomplished Juliana Berners, prioress of the neighbouring nunnery of Sopwell, was printed at the monastery in 1486, and reprinted ten years later by Wynkyn de Worde.