Caxton, William

Caxton, William (c.1422-1491), English merchant and diplomat who turned to writing and translating and set up the first printing press in England.

The exact place and date of Caxton’s birth are unrecorded, and nothing is known of his parentage. However, he himself wrote that he was born in Kent, and as he is first documented in 1438 as an apprentice in the Mercers’ Company of London (for which the minimum age was 14), it is highly likely that he was born about 15 years earlier, in the early 1420s. The members of the Mercers’ Company specialized in exporting woollen cloth and also dealt in other textiles. Much of this trade was with the Low Countries, and by 1449 Caxton was living in Bruges. There he became a leading member of the English merchant community, and from 1462 to about 1470 he was its governor. This was an important position, for he was involved in negotiating commercial treaties with the dukes of Burgundy, who then ruled this part of Europe.

In 1469, for recreation, Caxton began translating a French prose work on the history of Troy and soon afterwards the direction of his career changed. He gave up his post as governor of the English merchants and became secretary to Margaret of Burgundy (the sister of Edward IV of England), who married Charles, Duke of Burgundy in 1468. Margaret encouraged Caxton’s literary activities, and in 1471-1472 he spent about 18 months in Cologne, where he learned the still fairly new technique of printing. While he was in Cologne, Caxton finished his translation and on his return to Bruges he printed the text, entitled Recuyell [Compilation] of the Historyes of Troye. This, the first printed book in English, was published probably in 1475 and later in the same year he issued his second book—another translation by himself from French, The Game and Playe of the Chesse (in which chess is treated as an allegory of life).

In 1476 Caxton returned to London, where he set up as a printer in a shop that he rented near Westminster Abbey. His first known publication in England was a single sheet—an indulgence dated December 13, 1476 (the only copy known to survive is in the Public Record Office, London). His first dated book, and the first book to be printed in England, was The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophers (1477), which was translated by his patron Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers. Most of Caxton’s books do not bear a date, but they can usually be given a fairly accurate place in his output by expert examination of the paper and typography.

In all, Caxton printed about 100 books, some 20 of which were translated from French or Dutch, on subjects that included history and geography, the lives of saints, fables, and instructional books (for example, on good manners and learning French). His output also included most of the works of Chaucer and the Confessio Amantis by Chaucer’s contemporary, John Gower. Caxton also wrote prefaces to many of the works he published, notably the preface to the prose epic Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory. In 1480 he began using woodcut illustrations in his books, the first dated example of which is The Myrrour of the Worlde (1481), a kind of popular science. At his death, probably late in 1491, when he was aged about 70, his business was taken over by his assistant Wynkyn de Worde.

Although Caxton’s books do not rank highly in terms of skill in typography or illustration, they firmly established the practice of printing in England. He also displayed a lively, humorous style that considerably influenced 15th-century English literature. Sixty-three of his publications survive, in single copies or in fragments, in the British Library.