William Caxton (ca. 1422 – 1491 or early 1492; his birth date is only estimated, between 1415 and 1424) was an English merchant, diplomat, translator and printer.
Caxton was born in the Weald of Kent. By 1438 he had been enrolled as an apprentice to a London mercer, Robert Large, and he later became a member of the Mercers' Company.
After learning the new printing craft in Cologne, he set up a printing press in Bruges in 1473, in collaboration with a Fleming, Colard Mansion.
The first book to be printed in English was Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, Caxton's own translation of a French romance by Raoul Lefèvre. It was printed in Bruges, Belgium, in 1473 or 1474, at a time when most books were printed in Latin. Only 18 copies are known to survive, and one sold for more than £1 million in 2014. Below is an engraving, from a presentation copy now in the Huntington Library in California, showing Caxton presenting the book to Margaret of York. |
The first book known to have been produced by Caxton at Westminster was an edition of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. His Dictes and Sayenges of the Phylosophers, issued on November 18, 1477, is the first dated book printed in England. He was also the first English retailer of printed books (his London contemporaries in the same trade were all Flemish, German or French).
Caxton rented a shop in the precincts of Westminster Abbey from 1476 to 1491. Contrary to the common claim, his first press was not in the Almonry; he moved to the Almonry shop, known as the Red Pale, around 1482–83.
Around 1477, Caxton printed what is regarded as the first advertisement in English, a handbill for a service book for the clergy, which promised it was "good chepe." (Check date and wording before publishing.)
William Caxton is a monumental figure in English literature, not only for printing but also for his translations. On March 26, 1484, he produced the first printed English translation of Aesop's Fables.
Just three weeks before the Wars of the Roses ended at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, William Caxton put on sale his newly printed edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s prose epic Le Morte d’Arthur. Despite its great length it was an instant best-seller. Malory, as Caxton had explained, had “taken” the tales “out of certain books of French”, then “reduced” them into English.
Caxton is credited with standardising the English language through printing. This facilitated the expansion of English vocabulary, the regularisation of inflection and syntax, and a widening gap between the spoken and the written word.
It is asserted that the spelling of "ghost" with the silent letter h was adopted by Caxton due to the influence of Flemish spelling habits.
The Lyme Missal, a Sarum Rite prayer book published by William Caxton in 1487 and printed for him in Paris by Guillaume Maynyal, was owned by just one family, the Leghs of Lyme Park, Cheshire, from at least 1508 until 2008, when it was purchased for £465,000 by the National Trust.
Between 1473 and his death, Caxton published around a hundred books, many of them his own translations from French, Latin and Dutch.
Caxton died in 1491 or early 1492 and was buried in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Westminster. His apprentice Wynkyn de Worde took over the Westminster shop.
A memorial to Caxton was unveiled in Westminster Abbey on November 12, 1954.
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