Caxton, William

Caxton, William (c.1422–91), the first English printer, and a prominent merchant. After apprenticeship in London he spent 30 years in the Low Countries. From 1465 to 1469 he was governor of the English merchants at Bruges, and he successfully negotiated commercial treaties with the dukes of Burgundy. In 1469 he became secretary to the household of Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. After his return to Bruges from Cologne (where he probably worked in a printing house) he presented Margaret with his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (printed in Bruges, 1473–4). He next printed, with the calligrapher Colard Mansion, The Game and Playe of the Chesse. He set up a press at Westminster in 1476—his first dated book printed there is The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (1477)—and printed about 100 books, a number of them his own translations from French. He used eight founts of type, and he began to use woodcut illustrations c.1480. His translations contributed to the development of the 15th-cent. prose style. It was his modified version of Malory that appeared as Malory's work before the discovery of the Winchester manuscript by W. F. Oakeshott in 1934.