80-576: William Caxton ( c. 1422 – c. 1491 ) was an English merchant, diplomat and writer. He is thought to be the first person to introduce a printing press into England in 1476, and as a printer to be the first English retailer of printed books. His parentage and date of birth are not known for certain, but he may have been born between 1415 and 1424, perhaps in the Weald or wood land of Kent , perhaps in Hadlow or Tenterden . In 1438 he
160-501: A lead -based alloy which suited printing purposes so well that it is still used today. The mass production of metal letters was achieved by his key invention of a special hand mould , the matrix . The Latin alphabet proved to be an enormous advantage in the process because, in contrast to logographic writing systems , it allowed the type-setter to represent any text with a theoretical minimum of only around two dozen different letters. Another factor conducive to printing arose from
240-451: A print medium (such as paper or cloth ), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in which the cloth, paper, or other medium was brushed or rubbed repeatedly to achieve the transfer of ink and accelerated the process. Typically used for texts, the invention and global spread of the printing press was one of the most influential events in the second millennium. In Germany , around 1440,
320-514: A compositor into the desired lines of text. Several lines of text would be arranged at once and were placed in a wooden frame known as a galley . Once the correct number of pages were composed, the galleys would be laid face up in a frame, also known as a forme, which itself is placed onto a flat stone, 'bed,' or 'coffin.' The text is inked using two balls , pads mounted on handles. The balls were made of dog skin leather, because it has no pores, and stuffed with sheep's wool and were inked. This ink
400-650: A few decades. From a single print shop in Mainz , Germany, printing had spread to no less than around 270 cities in Central, Western and Eastern Europe by the end of the 15th century. As early as 1480, there were printers active in 110 different places in Germany, Italy, France , Spain , the Netherlands , Belgium , Switzerland , England , Bohemia and Poland . From that time on, it is assumed that "the printed book
480-482: A full twelve months' production; so a date of death towards autumn of 1491 could be deduced even without confirmation of documentary evidence." Wynkyn de Worde , a Fleming, became the owner of the printing plant after Caxton's death and carried it on for forty-three years. Wynkyn prospered, continuing to put out a steady succession of editions of the small popular pamphlets which were started in Caxton's time. In 1820,
560-503: A hand press connected to a steam engine ." In April 1811, the first production trial of this model occurred. He produced his machine with assistance from German engineer Andreas Friedrich Bauer . In 1814, Koenig and Bauer sold two of their first models to The Times in London , capable of 1,100 impressions per hour. The first edition so printed was on 28 November 1814. They improved the early model so that it could print on both sides of
640-479: A large number of works into English and performed much of the translation and the editing work himself. He is credited with printing as many as 108 books, 87 of which were different titles, including the first English translation of Aesop's Fables (26 March 1484). Caxton also translated 26 of the titles himself. His major guiding principle in translating was an honest desire to provide the most linguistically exact replication of foreign language texts into English, but
720-548: A major role in rallying support, and opposition, during the lead-up to the English Civil War , and later still the American and French Revolutions through newspapers, pamphlets and bulletins. The advent of the printing press brought with it issues involving censorship and freedom of the press. The invention of mechanical movable type printing led to a huge increase of printing activities across Europe within only
800-735: A memorial tablet to Caxton was provided in St Margaret's by the Roxburghe Club and its President, Earl Spencer . In November 1954, a memorial to Caxton was unveiled in Westminster Abbey by J. J. Astor , chairman of the Press Council . The white stone plaque is on the wall next to the door to Poets' Corner . The inscription reads: Near this place William Caxton set up the first printing press in England. In 1976
880-448: A paper mill. However, it was not until a 1439 lawsuit against Gutenberg that an official record existed; witnesses' testimony discussed Gutenberg's types, an inventory of metals (including lead), and his type molds. Having previously worked as a professional goldsmith, Gutenberg made skillful use of the knowledge of metals he had learned as a craftsman. He was the first to make type from an alloy of lead , tin , and antimony , which
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#1732776127595960-408: A press in its completed form, with tympans attached to the end of the carriage, and with the frisket above the tympans. The tympans, inner and outer, are thin iron frames, one fitting into the other, on each of which is stretched a skin of parchment or a breadth of fine cloth. A woollen blanket or two with a few sheets of paper are placed between these, the whole thus forming a thin elastic pad, on which
1040-607: A press. Bringing the knowledge back to England, he set up the country's first-ever press in The Almonry area of Westminster in 1476. The first book known to have been produced there was an edition of Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales (Blake, 2004–07). Another early title was Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres ( Sayings of the Philosophers ), first printed on 18 November 1477, translated by Earl Rivers ,
1120-431: A reasonably cost-effective duplicating solution for commerce at this time. The table lists the maximum number of pages which the various press designs could print per hour . General: Printing presses: Other inventions: From old price tables it can be deduced that the capacity of a printing press around 1600, assuming a fifteen-hour workday, was between 3.200 and 3.600 impressions per day. This method almost doubled
1200-432: A sheet at once. This began the long process of making newspapers available to a mass audience, which helped spread literacy. From the 1820s it changed the nature of book production, forcing a greater standardization in titles and other metadata . Their company Koenig & Bauer AG is still one of the world's largest manufacturers of printing presses today. The steam-powered rotary printing press , invented in 1843 in
1280-518: A widening gap between the spoken and the written words. Richard Pynson started printing in London in 1491 or 1492 and favoured what came to be called Chancery Standard , largely based on the London dialect. Pynson was a more accomplished stylist than Caxton and consequently pushed the English language further toward standardisation. It is asserted that the spelling of "ghost" with the silent letter h
1360-557: Is also credited with the introduction of an oil-based ink which was more durable than the previously used water-based inks. As printing material he used both paper and vellum (high-quality parchment). In the Gutenberg Bible , Gutenberg made a trial of colour printing for a few of the page headings, present only in some copies. A later work, the Mainz Psalter of 1453, presumably designed by Gutenberg but published under
1440-573: Is harde to playſe euery man/ by cauſe of dyuerſite ⁊ chaũge of langage" ("Lo, what should a man in these days now write: egges or eyren? Certainly it is hard to please every man because of diversity and change of language"). Works published by Caxton from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress Printing press A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon
1520-441: Is known to have produced was an edition of Chaucer 's The Canterbury Tales , he went on to publish chivalric romances, classical works and English and Roman histories and to edit many others. He was the first to translate Aesop's Fables in 1484. Caxton was not an adequate translator, and under pressure to publish as much as possible as quickly as possible, he sometimes simply transferred French words into English; but because of
1600-545: Is only another manifestation of the fact that this basic mechanism was foreign to that culture. Robert Large Robert Large (died 1441) was a London merchant, a member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers , who was Mayor of London and a Member of Parliament . He served as one of the Mercers' four yearly wardens in 1427 and was Sheriff of London in 1430-31. In 1437/8, he was the wealthy master to whom
1680-425: Is rolled under the platen , using a windlass mechanism. A small rotating handle called the 'rounce' is used to do this, and the impression is made with a screw that transmits pressure through the platen. To turn the screw the long handle attached to it is turned. This is known as the bar or 'Devil's Tail.' In a well-set-up press, the springiness of the paper, frisket, and tympan caused the bar to spring back and raise
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#17327761275951760-515: Is that various place names nearby are frequently mentioned by Caxton. Caxton was in London by 1438, when the registers of the Mercers' Company record his apprenticeship to Robert Large , a wealthy London mercer or dealer in luxury goods, who served as Master of the Mercers' Company, and Lord Mayor of London in 1439. After Large died in 1441, Caxton was left a small sum of money (£20). As other apprentices were left larger sums, it would seem that he
1840-500: The 42-line Bible . After much experimentation, Gutenberg managed to overcome the difficulties which traditional water-based inks caused by soaking the paper, and found the formula for an oil-based ink suitable for high-quality printing with metal type. A printing press, in its classical form, is a standing mechanism, ranging from 5 to 7 feet (1.5 to 2.1 m) long, 3 feet (0.91 m) wide, and 7 feet (2.1 m) tall. The small individual metal letters known as type would be set up by
1920-566: The Duke of Burgundy , they moved to Bruges and befriended Caxton. Margaret encouraged Caxton to complete his translation of the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye , a collection of stories associated with Homer 's Iliad , which he did in 1471. On his return to England, heavy demand for his translation prompted Caxton to set up a press at Westminster in 1476. Although the first book that he
2000-603: The Mediterranean and medieval diet . The device was also used from very early on in urban contexts as a cloth press for printing patterns. Gutenberg may have also been inspired by the paper presses which had spread through the German lands since the late 14th century and which worked on the same mechanical principles. During the Islamic Golden Age , Arab Muslims were printing texts, including passages from
2080-841: The Quincentenary of the Introduction of Printing into England exhibit was held at the British Library. There were forty-five events during the quincentenary including the Caxton International Congress at the Printing Historical Society , and exhibits at the John Rylands Library, Westminster Abbey, and Cambridge University Library. Caxton printed 80 percent of his works in the English language. He translated
2160-624: The Qur’an , embracing the Chinese craft of paper making, developed it and adopted it widely in the Muslim world , which led to a major increase in the production of manuscript texts. In Egypt during the Fatimid era, the printing technique was adopted reproducing texts on paper strips by hand and supplying them in various copies to meet the demand. Gutenberg adopted the basic design, thereby mechanizing
2240-642: The United States by Richard M. Hoe , ultimately allowed millions of copies of a page in a single day. Mass production of printed works flourished after the transition to rolled paper, as continuous feed allowed the presses to run at a much faster pace. Hoe's original design operated at up to 2,000 revolutions per hour where each revolution deposited 4 page images, giving the press a throughput of 8,000 pages per hour. By 1891, The New York World and Philadelphia Item were operating presses producing either 90,000 4-page sheets per hour or 48,000 8-page sheets. In
2320-556: The goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the movable-type printing press, which started the Printing Revolution . Modelled on the design of existing screw presses , a single Renaissance movable-type printing press could produce up to 3,600 pages per workday, compared to forty by hand-printing and a few by hand-copying . Gutenberg's newly devised hand mould made possible the precise and rapid creation of metal movable type in large quantities. His two inventions,
2400-507: The typographical principle , the idea of creating a text by reusing individual characters, was known and had been cropping up since the 12th century and possibly before (the oldest known application dating back as far as the Phaistos disc ). The first movable type was invented by Chinese engineer Bi Sheng in the 11th century during the Song dynasty , and a book dating to 1193 recorded
2480-435: The 16th century, with presses spreading further afield, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies. By the mid-17th century, the first printing presses arrived in colonial America in response to the increasing demand for Bibles and other religious literature. The operation of a press became synonymous with the enterprise of printing and lent its name to a new medium of expression and communication, "
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2560-625: The Historyes of Troye , he claims to have been born and educated in the Weald of Kent . Oral tradition in Tonbridge claims that Caxton was born there; the same with Tenterden. One of the manors of Hadlow was Caustons, owned by the Caxton (De Causton) family. A house in Hadlow reputed to be the birthplace of William Caxton was dismantled in 1936 and incorporated into a larger house rebuilt in Forest Row , East Sussex . Further evidence for Hadlow
2640-658: The author was less important, since a copy of Aristotle made in Paris would not be exactly identical to one made in Bologna. For many works prior to the printing press, the name of the author has been entirely lost. Because the printing process ensured that the same information fell on the same pages, page numbering, tables of contents , and indices became common, though they previously had not been unknown. The process of reading also changed, gradually moving over several centuries from oral readings to silent, private reading. Over
2720-633: The book existing in the format of the codex , which had originated in the Roman period . Considered the most important advance in the history of the book prior to printing itself, the codex had completely replaced the ancient scroll at the onset of the Middle Ages (AD 500). The codex holds considerable practical advantages over the scroll format: it is more convenient to read (by turning pages), more compact, and less costly, and both recto and verso sides could be used for writing or printing, unlike
2800-402: The books that he printed. He wrote about that subject in the preface to his Eneydos . His successor Wynkyn de Worde faced similar problems. Caxton is credited with standardising the English language through printing by homogenising regional dialects and largely adopting the London dialect. That facilitated the expansion of English vocabulary, the regularisation of inflection and syntax and
2880-537: The establishment of widely disseminated scholarly journals, helping to bring on the Scientific Revolution . Because of the printing press, authorship became more meaningful and profitable. It was suddenly important who had said or written what, and what the precise formulation and time of composition was. This allowed the exact citing of references, producing the rule, "One Author, one work (title), one piece of information" (Giesecke, 1989; 325). Before,
2960-447: The first copyright laws were passed. On the other hand, the printing press was criticized for allowing the dissemination of information that may have been incorrect. A second outgrowth of this popularization of knowledge was the decline of Latin as the language of most published works, to be replaced by the vernacular language of each area, increasing the variety of published works. The printed word also helped to unify and standardize
3040-669: The first copper movable type. This received limited use compared to woodblock printing. The technology spread outside China, as the oldest printed book using metal movable type was the Jikji , printed in Korea in 1377 during the Goryeo era. Other notable examples include the Prüfening inscription from Germany, letter tiles from England and Altarpiece of Pellegrino II in Italy. However,
3120-473: The force required by 90%, while doubling the size of the printed area. With a capacity of 480 pages per hour, the Stanhope press doubled the output of the old style press. Nonetheless, the limitations inherent to the traditional method of printing became obvious. Two ideas altered the design of the printing press radically: First, the use of steam power for running the machinery, and second the replacement of
3200-479: The hand mould and the movable-type printing press, together drastically reduced the cost of printing books and other documents in Europe, particularly for shorter print runs. From Mainz , the movable-type printing press spread within several decades to over 200 cities in a dozen European countries. By 1500, printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than 20 million volumes. In
3280-431: The hurried publishing schedule and his inadequate skill as a translator often led to wholesale transference of French words into English and to numerous misunderstandings. The English language was changing rapidly in Caxton's time, and the works that he was given to print were in a variety of styles and dialects. Caxton was a technician, rather than a writer, and he often faced dilemmas concerning language standardisation in
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3360-482: The imprint of his successors Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer , had elaborate red and blue printed initials. The Printing Revolution occurred when the spread of the printing press facilitated the wide circulation of information and ideas, acting as an "agent of change" through the societies that it reached. Demand for bibles and other religious literature was one of the main drivers of the very rapid initial expansion of printing. Much later, printed literature played
3440-774: The king's brother-in-law. Caxton's translations of the Golden Legend (1483) and The Book of the Knight in the Tower (1484) contain perhaps the earliest verses of the Bible to be printed in English. He produced the first translation of Ovid 's Metamorphoses in English. His translation of the Golden Legend was based on the French translation of Jean de Vignay . Caxton produced chivalric romances (such as Fierabras ),
3520-578: The manor of Little Wratting in Suffolk ; in one charter, this William Caxton is referred to as "otherwise called Causton saddler". One possible candidate for William's father is Thomas Caxton of Tenterden , Kent, who was like William, a mercer . He was one of the defendants in a case in the Court of Common Pleas in Easter term 1420: Kent. John Okman, versus "Thomas Kaxton, of Tentyrden, mercer", and Joan who
3600-551: The middle of the 19th century, there was a separate development of jobbing presses , small presses capable of printing small-format pieces such as billheads , letterheads, business cards, and envelopes. Jobbing presses were capable of quick setup, with an average setup time for a small job was under 15 minutes, and quick production. Even on treadle-powered jobbing presses it was considered normal to get 1,000 impressions per hour [iph] with one pressman, with speeds of 1,500 iph often attained on simple envelope work. Job printing emerged as
3680-669: The monopoly of the literate elite on education and learning and bolstered the emerging middle class . Across Europe, the increasing cultural self-awareness of its peoples led to the rise of proto- nationalism and accelerated the development of European vernaculars , to the detriment of Latin 's status as lingua franca . In the 19th century, the replacement of the hand-operated Gutenberg-style press by steam-powered rotary presses allowed printing on an industrial scale. The rapid economic and socio-cultural development of late medieval society in Europe created favorable intellectual and technological conditions for Gutenberg's improved version of
3760-640: The most important of which was Sir Thomas Malory 's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485); classical works; and English and Roman histories. These books appealed to the English upper classes in the late 15th century. Caxton was supported by (but not dependent on) members of the nobility and the gentry. He may also have been paid by the authors of works such as Lorenzo Gulielmo Traversagni, who wrote the Epitome margaritae eloquentiae , which Caxton published c. 1480 . The John Rylands Library in Manchester holds
3840-538: The next 200 years, the wider availability of printed materials led to a dramatic rise in the adult literacy rate throughout Europe. The printing press was an important step towards the democratization of knowledge . Within 50 or 60 years of the invention of the printing press, the entire classical canon had been reprinted and widely promulgated throughout Europe (Eisenstein, 1969; 52). More people had access to knowledge both new and old, more people could discuss these works. Book production became more commercialised, and
3920-589: The page, did not exceed an output of forty pages per day. Of Erasmus 's work, at least 750,000 copies were sold during his lifetime alone (1469–1536). In the early days of the Reformation, the revolutionary potential of bulk printing took princes and papacy alike by surprise. In the period from 1518 to 1524, the publication of books in Germany alone skyrocketed sevenfold; between 1518 and 1520, Luther 's tracts were distributed in 300,000 printed copies. The rapidity of typographical text production, as well as
4000-399: The platen, the windlass turned again to move the bed back to its original position, the tympan and frisket raised and opened, and the printed sheet removed. Such presses were always worked by hand. After around 1800, iron presses were developed, some of which could be operated by steam power . The function of the printing press was described by William Skeen in 1872: this sketch represents
4080-555: The press ". The spread of mechanical movable type printing in Europe in the Renaissance introduced the era of mass communication , which permanently altered the structure of society. The relatively unrestricted circulation of information and (revolutionary) ideas transcended borders, captured the masses in the Reformation , and threatened the power of political and religious authorities. The sharp increase in literacy broke
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#17327761275954160-431: The press that led to the press's invention included: manufacturing of paper , development of ink, woodblock printing , and invention of eyeglasses . At the same time, a number of medieval products and technological processes had reached a level of maturity which allowed their potential use for printing purposes. Gutenberg took up these far-flung strands, combined them into one complete and functioning system, and perfected
4240-465: The price of paper to one-sixth of parchment and then falling further. Papermaking centers reached Germany a century later. Despite this it appears that the final breakthrough of paper depended just as much on the rapid spread of movable-type printing. Codices of parchment, which in terms of quality is superior to any other writing material , still had a substantial share in Gutenberg's edition of
4320-459: The printing flatbed with the rotary motion of cylinders. Both elements were for the first time successfully implemented by the German printer Friedrich Koenig in a series of press designs devised between 1802 and 1818. Having moved to London in 1804, Koenig soon met Thomas Bensley and secured financial support for his project in 1807. Patented in 1810, Koenig had designed a steam press "much like
4400-440: The printing press: the entrepreneurial spirit of emerging capitalism increasingly made its impact on medieval modes of production, fostering economic thinking and improving the efficiency of traditional work processes. The sharp rise of medieval learning and literacy amongst the middle class led to an increased demand for books which the time-consuming hand-copying method fell far short of accommodating. Technologies preceding
4480-420: The printing presses in operation throughout Western Europe had already produced more than twenty million copies. In the following century, their output rose tenfold to an estimated 150 to 200 million copies. European printing presses of around 1600 were capable of producing between 1,500 and 3,600 impressions per workday. By comparison, Far Eastern printing, where the back of the paper was manually rubbed to
4560-522: The printing process through all its stages by adding a number of inventions and innovations of his own: The screw press which allowed direct pressure to be applied on a flat plane was already of great antiquity in Gutenberg's time and was used for a wide range of tasks. Introduced in the 1st century AD by the Romans , it was commonly employed in agricultural production for pressing grapes for wine and olives for oil, both of which formed an integral part of
4640-501: The printing process. Printing, however, put a demand on the machine quite different from pressing. Gutenberg adapted the construction so that the pressing power exerted by the platen on the paper was now applied both evenly and with the required sudden elasticity. To speed up the printing process, he introduced a movable undertable with a plane surface on which the sheets could be swiftly changed. The concept of movable type existed prior to 15th century Europe; sporadic evidence that
4720-505: The printing speed and produced more than 40 copies a day. Printing technology reached its peak at this point. At the same time, then, as the printing press in the physical, technological sense was invented, 'the press' in the extended sense of the word also entered the historical stage. The phenomenon of publishing was born. The outstanding difference between the two ends of the Old World was the absence of screw-presses from China, but this
4800-516: The reliability of trade and led to the decline of merchant guilds and the rise of individual traders. At the dawn of the Industrial Revolution , the mechanics of the hand-operated Gutenberg-style press were still essentially unchanged, although new materials in its construction, amongst other innovations, had gradually improved its printing efficiency. By 1800, Lord Stanhope had built a press completely from cast iron which reduced
4880-491: The scroll. A fourth development was the early success of medieval papermakers at mechanizing paper manufacture. The introduction of water-powered paper mills , the first certain evidence of which dates to 1282, allowed for a massive expansion of production and replaced the laborious handcraft characteristic of both Chinese and Muslim papermaking. Papermaking centres began to multiply in the late 13th century in Italy , reducing
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#17327761275954960-597: The second-largest collection of printing by Caxton, after the British Library 's collection. Of the Rylands collection of more than 60 examples 36 are complete and unsophisticated copies and four are unique. Caxton's precise date of death is uncertain, but estimates from the records of his burial in St. Margaret's, Westminster , suggest that he died near March 1492. However, George D. Painter makes numerous references to
5040-464: The sharp fall in unit costs, led to the issuing of the first newspapers (see Relation ) which opened up an entirely new field for conveying up-to-date information to the public. Incunable are surviving pre-16th century print works which are collected by many of the libraries in Europe and North America . The printing press was also a factor in the establishment of a community of scientists who could easily communicate their discoveries through
5120-489: The sheet from contact with any thing but the inked surface of the types, when the pull, which brings down the screw and forces the platten to produce the impression, is made by the pressman who works the lever,—to whom is facetiously given the title of "the practitioner at the bar.". Johannes Gutenberg 's work on the printing press began in approximately 1436 when he partnered with Andreas Dritzehn—a man who had previously instructed in gem-cutting —and Andreas Heilmann, owner of
5200-403: The sheet to be printed is laid. The frisket is a slender frame-work, covered with coarse paper, on which an impression is first taken; the whole of the printed part is then cut out, leaving apertures exactly corresponding with the pages of type on the carriage of the press. The frisket when folded on to the tympans, and both turned down over the forme of types and run in under the platten, preserves
5280-492: The spelling and syntax of these vernaculars, in effect 'decreasing' their variability. This rise in importance of national languages as opposed to pan-European Latin is cited as one of the causes of the rise of nationalism in Europe. A third consequence of popularization of printing was on the economy. The printing press was associated with higher levels of city growth. The publication of trade-related manuals and books teaching techniques like double-entry bookkeeping increased
5360-465: The success of his translations, he is credited with helping to promote the Chancery English that he used to the status of standard dialect throughout England. In 2002, Caxton was named among the 100 Greatest Britons in a BBC poll. Caxton's family "fairly certainly" consisted of his parents, Philip and Dionisia, and a brother, Philip. However, the charters used as evidence there are for
5440-540: The third wife of Charles the Bold and sister of two kings of England: Edward IV and Richard III . That led to more continental travel, including to Cologne , in the course of which he observed the new printing industry and was significantly influenced by German printing. He wasted no time in setting up a printing press in Bruges in collaboration with a Fleming , Colard Mansion , and the first book to be printed in English
5520-513: The various techniques employed (imprinting, punching and assembling individual letters) did not have the refinement and efficiency needed to become widely accepted. Tsuen-Hsuin and Needham, and Briggs and Burke suggest that the movable-type printing in China and Korea was rarely employed. Gutenberg greatly improved the process by treating typesetting and printing as two separate work steps. A goldsmith by profession, he created his type pieces from
5600-428: The year 1491 in his book William Caxton: a biography as the year of Caxton's death since 24 March was the last day of the year according to the calendar that used at the time and so the year change had not yet happened. Painter writes, "However, Caxton's own output reveals the approximate time of his death, for none of his books can be later than 1491, and even those which are assignable to that year are hardly enough for
5680-573: The young William Caxton was apprenticed. He was Member of Parliament in 1435 for the City of London as one of the two aldermanic representatives and was elected Lord Mayor in 1439-40. He died in 1441, and his will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury. The publication of a 100-page book about him entitled The Life and Family of Robert Large, mercer: mayor of London 1439-1440 and first employer of William Caxton by David Large
5760-511: Was adopted by Caxton from the influence of Flemish spelling habits. In Caxton's prologue to the 1490 edition of his translation of Virgil 's Aeneid , called by him Eneydos , he refers to the problems of finding a standardised English. Caxton recounts what took place when a boat sailing from London to Zeeland was becalmed, and landed on the Kent side of the Thames . A mercer called Sheffield
5840-615: Was apprenticed to Robert Large , a wealthy London silk mercer . Shortly after Large's death, Caxton moved to Bruges , Belgium, a wealthy cultured city in which he was settled by 1450. Successful in business, he became governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London ; on his business travels, he observed the new printing industry in Cologne , which led him to start a printing press in Bruges in collaboration with Colard Mansion . When Margaret of York , sister of Edward IV , married
5920-558: Was critical for producing durable type that produced high-quality printed books and proved to be much better suited for printing than all other known materials. To create these lead types, Gutenberg used what is considered one of his most ingenious inventions, a special matrix enabling the quick and precise molding of new type blocks from a uniform template. His type case is estimated to have contained around 290 separate letter boxes, most of which were required for special characters, ligatures , punctuation marks , and so forth. Gutenberg
6000-432: Was from the north of England. He went into a house and asked the "good wyf" if he could buy some " egges ". She replied that she could not speak French, which annoyed him, as he could also not speak French. A bystander suggested that Sheffield was asking for " eyren ", which the woman said she understood. After recounting the interaction, Caxton wrote: "Loo what ſholde a man in thyſe dayes now wryte egges or eyren/ certaynly it
6080-548: Was in universal use in Europe". In Italy, a center of early printing, print shops had been established in 77 cities and towns by 1500. At the end of the following century, 151 locations in Italy had seen at one time printing activities, with a total of nearly three thousand printers known to be active. Despite this proliferation, printing centres soon emerged; thus, one third of the Italian printers published in Venice . By 1500,
6160-433: Was not a senior apprentice at this time. Caxton was making trips to Bruges by 1450 and had settled there by 1453, when he may have taken his Liberty of the Mercers' Company . There, he was successful in business and became governor of the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London . His trade brought him into contact with Burgundy and it was thus that he became a member of the household of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy ,
6240-462: Was produced in 1473: Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye was a translation by Caxton himself. In the epilogue of the book, Caxton tells how his "pen became worn, his hand weary, his eye dimmed" with copying the book by hand and so he "practiced and learnt" how to print it. His translation had become popular in the Burgundian court, and requests for copies of it were the stimulus for him to set up
6320-418: Was the wife of Thomas Ive, executors of Thomas Ive, for the return of two bonds (scripta obligatoria) which they unjustly retain. Caxton's date of birth is unknown. Records place it in 1415–1424, based on the fact that his apprenticeship fees were paid in 1438. Caxton would have been 14 at the date of apprenticeship, but masters often paid the fees late. In the preface to his first printed work The Recuyell of
6400-420: Was then applied to the text evenly. One damp piece of paper was then taken from a heap of paper and placed on the tympan. The paper was damp as this lets the type 'bite' into the paper better. Small pins hold the paper in place. The paper is now held between a frisket and tympan (two frames covered with paper or parchment). These are folded down, so that the paper lies on the surface of the inked type. The bed
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