An edition of Bartholomaeus' De proprietatibus rerum issued about this time has a number of cuts, not of very great interest; and the Book of St. Albans of 1496 has an extra chapter on fishing, illustrated with a picture of an angler at work, with a tub, in the German fashion, to put his fish into. It has also a curiously modern diagram of the sizes of hooks. In 1498 De Worde issued an illustrated edition of Malory's Morte d'Arthur. The cuts are very ambitious, but badly executed, and the hand of the engraver who cut them may be traced in several books. In 1499 an edition of Mandeville was issued, ornamented with a number of small cuts, and about this time several small books were issued having cuts on the title-page.
Richard Pynson's first illustrated book was an edition of the Canterbury Tales, printed some time before 1492. At the head of each tale is a rudely executed cut of the pilgrim who narrates it. These cuts were made for this edition, and were in some cases altered while the book was going through the press to serve for different characters: the Squire and the Manciple, the Sergeant and Doctor of Physic, are from the same blocks with slight alterations. In 1494 came an edition of Lydgate's Falle of Princis, a translation from the De Casibus virorum et feminarum illustrium of Boccaccio, illustrated with the cuts used by Jean Dupré
in his Paris edition of a French version of the same work in 1483. One of the neatest of these, depicting Marcus Manlius thrown into the Tiber, is here shown. About 1497 an edition of the Speculum Vite Christi was issued, with a number of neatly executed small cuts, and in 1500 Pynson printed the beautiful Sarum Missal, known as the Morton Missal. Special borders and ornaments, introducing a rebus on the name of Morton, were engraved for this, and a full-page cut of the pre
late's coat of arms appears at the commencement of the book.
After the year 1500 almost every book issued by W. de Worde, who was pre-eminently the popular publisher, had an illustration on the title-page. This was not always cut for the book, nor indeed always very applicable to the letterpress, and the cuts can almost all be arranged into series made for more important books. There were, however, a few stock cuts: a schoolmaster with a gigantic birch for grammars, a learned man seated at a desk for works of more advanced scholarship, and lively pictures of hell for theological treatises. The title-page was formed on a fixed plan. At the top, printed inside a wood-cut ribbon, was placed the title, below this the cut.
Pynson, who was the Royal printer, and a publisher of learned works, disdained such attempts to catch the more vulgar buyers. His title-pages rarely have cuts, and these are only used on such few popular books as he issued. Both he and De Worde had a set of narrow upright cuts of men and women with blank labels over their heads, which could be used for any purpose, and have the names printed in type in the label above.
Foreign competition was also at this time making its influence felt on English book-illustration. W. de Worde had led the way by purchasing from Godfried van Os, about 1492, some type initial letters, and at least one woodcut. Pynson, early
in the sixteenth century, obtained some cuts from Vérard, which he used in his edition of the Kalendar of Shepherdes, 1506, and Julian Notary, who began printing about 1496, seems to have made use of a miscellaneous collection of cuts obtained from various quarters. He had, amongst other curious things, part of a set of metal cuts executed in the manière criblée, which have not been traced to any other book, but appear to have passed at a considerably later date into the hands of Wyer, who commenced to print before 1524. When W. de Worde left Westminster in 1500 to settle in Fleet Street, he parted with some of his old woodcuts to Notary,—woodcuts which had been used in the Horae of 1494, and had originally belonged to Caxton. All these miscellaneous cuts appear in his Golden Legend of 1503, and the large cut of the 'Assembly of Saints' on the title-page seems also to have been borrowed. It was used by Hopyl at Paris in 1505 for his edition of the Golden Legend in Dutch, and passed afterwards with Hopyl's business to his son-in-law Prevost, who used it in a theological work of John Major's. The engraved metal ornamental initials were obtained from André Bocard.
Some time before 1510 an extremely curious book, entitled the Passion of our Lorde Jesu, was printed abroad, probably in Paris. The uncouthness of the language seems to have brought about its destruction; for, though many fragments have