Outlines of English and American Literature Story of the Printing Press byLong, William J.
The story of how printing came to England, not as a literary but as a
business venture, is a very interesting one. Caxton was an English merchant
who had established himself at Bruges, then one of the trading centers of
Europe. There his business prospered, and he became governor of the
Domus Angliae, or House of the English Guild of Merchant
Adventurers. There is romance in the very name. With moderate wealth came
leisure to Caxton, and he indulged his literary taste by writing his own
version of some popular romances concerning the siege of Troy, being
encouraged by the English princess Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, into
whose service he had entered.
Copies of his work being in demand, Caxton consulted the professional
copyists, whose beautiful work we read about in a remarkable novel called
The Cloister and the Hearth. Then suddenly came to Bruges the rumor
of Gutenberg's discovery of printing from movable types, and Caxton
hastened to Germany to investigate the matter, led by the desire to get
copies of his own work as cheaply as possible. The discovery fascinated
him; instead of a few copies of his manuscript he brought back to Bruges a
press, from which he issued his Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy
(1474), which was probably the first book to appear in English print. Quick
to see the commercial advantages of the new invention, Caxton moved his
printing press to London, near Westminster Abbey, where he brought out in
1477 his Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers, the first book
ever printed on English soil. [Footnote: Another book of Caxton's, The
Game and Playe of the Chesse (1475) was long accorded this honor, but
it is fairly certain that the book on chess-playing was printed in Bruges.]
The First Printed Books
From the very outset Caxton's venture was successful, and he was soon busy
in supplying books that were most in demand. He has been criticized for not
printing the classics and other books of the New Learning; but he evidently
knew his business and his audience, and aimed to give people what they
wanted, not what he thought they ought to have. Chaucer's Canterbury
Tales, Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Mandeville's Travels,
Æsop's Fables, parts of the Æneid, translations of French
romances, lives of the saints (The Golden Legend), cookbooks, prayer books,
books of etiquette,--the list of Caxton's eighty-odd publications becomes
significant when we remember that he printed only popular books, and that
the titles indicate the taste of the age which first looked upon the marvel
of printing.
