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Home  »  library  »  BIOS  »  William Caxton (c. 1415–1491)

C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

William Caxton (c. 1415–1491)

Caxton, William. An English printer and scholar; born in the Weald of Kent, about 1415; died in 1491. His ‘Recuyell [collection] of the Histories of Troy,’ translated by him from the French appears to have been printed in 1474, most probably at Bruges, in Belgium. It was the first book in English reproduced by typography. He set up a printing-office in Westminster, 1476; the next year issued ‘The Dictes or Sayings of the Philosophers,’ folio, the first book printed in England. He printed in all 71 separate works, very many of them translated by him from the French; his translations even of Latin classic authors were made, not directly from the original language, but from French versions.