CAXTON, William

CAXTON, William [c.1420–c.1491]. English printer, editor, and translator, who introduced PRINTING to England in 1476, and published the first printed editions of CHAUCER, Lydgate, Gower, and Malory. He was in Bruges in the Low Countries in 1450, where he became a leader of the English community and protégé of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy. At her suggestion, he completed his first translation (from French), The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1471). Wearied by copying, he went to Cologne to learn the art of printing introduced at Mainz c.1450, and the Recuyell, the first book printed in English, was published in 1476 at his press in Bruges.

Caxton set up the first printing house in England near the court and Westminster Abbey, just outside London. He published about 100 works, mostly in English and rarely in fashionable French or revered Latin. His first dated book was Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers (1477). His patrons included kings, nobles, and wealthy merchants, who sometimes commissioned books, but the religious works which he published were probably the most widely read. Many of his publications were his own translations, but many were by English authors, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (?1478) and Malory's Morte Darthur (1485). He sometimes set out his views on language and style in prologues and epilogues added to his publications. Best-known is the prologue to his translation of the French Eneydos (1490), where he confronted the difficult choice among late 15c styles: native ‘olde and homely termes’, courtly ‘fayr & straunge termes’, and ‘comyn termes that be dayli vsed’. He pondered the variation of English in time (‘our langage now vsed varyeth ferre from that which was vsed and spoken whan I was borne’) and space (‘that comyn englysshe that is spoken in one shyre varyeth from a nother’), weighty considerations to the publisher who, unlike a scribe who supplies a unique copy for his patron, sold his books nationwide.

For Caxton, Chaucer ‘for his ornate wrytyng in our tongue may wel have the name of a laureate poete. For to fore that he by hys labour enbelysshyd, ornated and made faire our Englisshe, in thys royame was had rude speche & incongrue, as yet it appiereth by olde bookes whyche at thys day ought not to have place ne be compared emong to hys beauteuous volumes and aournate writynges.’ Such stylistic concerns influenced Caxton's practice as an editor-publisher: he altered the text of ‘beauteuous’ Chaucer little, producing a second edition when his first proved to rest on an untrustworthy manuscript; but he ‘enbelysshyd’ passages in Malory that showed the influence of their ‘olde and homely’ original. Though his introduction of printing was epochal for English language and literature, his own style, even with regard to choice of words, was variable: Germanic when he had a Dutch source, Romance when it was Latin or French. He was ramshackle when unguided by a source, ad-libbing his spelling (wrytyng/writynge, ornate/aournate) and doubling and tripling his terms (vsed and spoken, enbelysshyd, ornated and made faire). See CHANCERY STANDARD, EARLY MODERN ENGLISH, PROSE, PUNCTUATION, STANDARD.