"Strange and Mervayllous Historyes": William Caxton, First English Printer

In 1473, readers of the Epilogue of The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye read that their copies were "not wreton with penne and ynke as other bokes ben." Instead of being handcopied, "all the bookes of this storye . . . thus enpryntid as ye here see were begonne in oon day and also fynisshed in oon day." The writer of these words, William Caxton, had just translated and printed the first book in the English language.

Caxton had the printing field largely to himself for some years. He had waiting for him a reading public of considerable size and diversity. What did he give these readers? How did he choose which books to print? Luckily for us, Caxton wrote his own Prologues and Epilogues to the books he printed. In these sections, he often explained why he had printed a book, whether it was aimed at a speciality audience of the general public, and what he found of value in it. He tells us about the writers he admires and his concerns about his own deficiencies as a translator and stylist. He shares his views of the state of the world around him and the ways it could be improved by the books people read.

Caxton was not a scholar or a cleric; he was a successful merchant who spent more than thirty years in Flanders. For part of that time he was Governor of the Merchant Adventurers in the city of Bruges; as such, he was the leader of all the English merchants there and worked for their interests with government officials and foreign merchants. Caxton's successful career as a merchant/diplomat must have been what brought him to the attention of the aristocrats who would become his patrons during his printing career.

Caxton became interested in translating and printing late in life. He was about fifty in 1470, when he learned the trade of printing. He set up his first press in Bruges, and in 1475 printed his own translation of the Historyes of Troye. In this Prologue to this book, Caxton explained that he began translating it because he had had such "grete pleasyr and delyte" from reading these "strange and mervayllous historyes" in French that he decided to translate the book into English, so that "hyt might be had as well in the royame of Englond as in other londes." In the Epilogue, he explained how translating this book led him to become a printer.

And for as moche as in the wrytyng of the same my penne is worn, myn hande wery and not stedfast, myn eyen dimmed with overmoche lokyng on the whit paper, and my corage not so prone and redy to laboure as hit hath ben, and that age crepeth on my dayly and febleth all the bodye, and also because I have promysid to dyverce gentilmen and to my frendes to adresse to hem as hastely as I myght this sayd book, therfore I have practysed and lerned at my grete charge and dispense to ordeyne this said book in prynte after the maner and forme as ye may here see.

In 1476 or 1477, he moved his press to Westminster, near London, where he printed about ninety-six different books in the fourteen years before his death in 1491. He did all his own editing and most of his own translating.

In 1484, Caxton printed the first English Aesop, an English version of a German collection of the famous tales which had been put together by a German physician and man of letters, Heinrich Steinhöwel. Steinhöwel's collection was the most extensive one available in the fifteenth century. A French monk translated it from German to French, and Caxton took the French version and translated it into English. He added six fables not found in either the French or German books, two of them apparently original with Caxton; they have a serious tone and their placement at the end of the book may indicate that Caxton did not want readers to overlook the instructional value of Aesop's tales.

Instead of printing classic literature in Greek...