Caxton, William (ca. 1421–1491). Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature

Businessman, critic, writer, translator, and printer,
William Caxton is most celebrated for establishing
the first printing press in England. Caxton was born
in Kent sometime between 1415 and 1422, most
likely in 1422. Besides the information he documents in the prologues and epilogues to his manuscripts, little is known of Caxton’s life or ancestry;
however, his parents are thought to have been influential because they gained an apprenticeship for
their son to Robert Large, a wealthy silk mercer who
became sheriff in 1430 and lord mayor of London in
1439. After Large’s death in 1441, Caxton moved to
Bruges, capital of Flanders, seat of the Burgundian
government and thriving center for manufacturing
and trade. In Bruges the prosperous merchant
traded in textiles, particularly silk and wool, as well
as luxury goods such as manuscripts, and he was appointed governor of the English Nation of Merchant
Adventurers. Here he met Margaret of York, the sister of England’s King Edward IV and the wife of
Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. The duchess
hired Caxton to become her financial adviser and to
acquire and translate books for her. The first book
she asked Caxton to translate was the
Le Recueil des
Histoires de Troyes,
a popular French ROMANCE.
Sometime between the years 1470 and 1474, Caxton
traveled to Cologne where he met Ulrich Zell, a
priest from Marinz, the town where Johann
Gutenberg had established the very first printing
press. Zell had established the first printing press in
Cologne and is probably responsible for teaching
Caxton the skill. Caxton, who by this time had
translated
The History of Troy and made several
copies of the book, returned to Bruges and, under
the duchess of Burgundy’s sponsorship, set up his
own printing press and hired calligrapher, bookseller, and translator Colard Mansion. Together, in
1474, they printed copies of
The History of Troy,
the first book to be printed in the English language, and dedicated the book to the duchess. The
next year the duo printed
The Game and Play of
Chess Moralized.
The printer returned to England
in 1476, and set up a printing press at Westminster,
where, in 1477, he printed Earl Rivers’s translation
of the
Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, the
first book to be printed in England.
During his career Caxton translated many
works from French, Latin, and Dutch into English;
printed many small, usually religious, documents
such as indulgences; and printed approximately
100 texts, most notably C
HAUCER’s CANTERBURY
TALES and TROILUS AND CRISEYDE, MALORY’s MORTE
D
’ARTHUR, Godfrey of Bouillon’s The Order of
Chivalry,
Ranulph HIGDEN’s Polychronicon,
GOWER’s CONFESSIO AMANTIS, Virgil’s Aeneid, many
poems by L
YDGATE and, perhaps his most ambi-
tious task, Jacobus de Voragine’s GOLDEN LEGEND.
Caxton’s texts included prologues and epilogues
that he wrote, which included his opinion of the
work; therefore, he is not only remembered as the
first printer of English literature, but also as the
first critic of the same.
Caxton’s body of work gave his peers access to
contemporary literature in their own language and
gives modern scholars an idea of the tastes, politics, and culture of the later medieval society he
lived in. The materials Caxton printed were both a
response to and an influence on the reading public, and, although Chaucer is ultimately responsible for the success of his writing, Caxton is to be
credited with making Chaucer’s work more rapidly
and readily available to the general reading public
of the time than it would have been otherwise, thus
accelerating Chaucer’s influence and eminence.
Until recently, people assumed that Caxton
lived a life of celibacy as a bachelor because there is
no mention of any wife in his writing. However,
the discovery of medical records proving that he
unquestionably had a legitimate daughter, Elizabeth, has led scholars to believe that he had a wife
and that his wife was most likely Maude Caxton,
who was buried at St. Margaret’s in Westminster
around the time William Caxton was buried there
after his 1491 death, which allegedly occurred on
the very day he completed the lengthy translation
of the
Vitas Patrum, or Lives of the Fathers. Trainees
Robert Copeland and Wynkyn de Worde succeeded Caxton; the latter is responsible for printing the
Lives of the Fathers after Caxton’s death.
Many of Caxton’s original manuscripts are currently housed in London’s British Museum.
Bibliography
Blake, Norman Francis. Selections from William Caxton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973.
———.
William Caxton and English Literary Culture.
London: Hambledon Press, 1991.
Painter, George D.
William Caxton: A Biography. New
York: Putnam, 1977.
Penninger, Frieda Elaine.
William Caxton. Boston:
Twayne, 1979.
Leslie Johnston

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