The product of Caxton’s press during his life is estimated at eighteen thousand pages, nearly all of folio size. Caxton did not print de-luxe editions as did other of the early printers of Europe, but his productions were no less interesting. On his first books the lines were not spaced to the full length. This gave to the right side of the page a ragged appearance, as in modern typewritten letters.
Caxton did not devote a separate page to a book title until late in his life, when he printed a title alone in the center of the first page. The reproduction (on the preceding page) of a part of Caxton’s “Fables of Esope” shows how the title was arranged at the page head.
Wynken de Worde, a native of western Germany, was a workman under Caxton and upon the latter’s death, about 1491, succeeded to the business of his master. He continued to print in Caxton’s house for several years, afterward removing to “Fleet-street at the sygn of the Sonne,” in London proper. Old English black-letter, which is now so popular, was used by De Worde to a great extent, and he was the first printer to introduce the Roman letter into England.
Richard Pynson, another of Caxton’s workmen and friend of De Worde, set up a press in Temple Bar, London, about 1492, and printed many useful books.
PAGE IN ENGLISH BY JOHN DAYE
From Fox’s famous “Acts and Monuments,” London, 1560
Richard Grafton is famous as a printer of English Bibles during the troublous times of the Reformation. The church authorities believed it was not good for the people in general to read the Sacred Scriptures, and the Bible, translated into English by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale, and printed anonymously by Richard Grafton at Antwerp, was the object of much concern to the ecclesiastics. The Bishop of London complained that “Some sons of iniquity have craftily translated the Holy Gospel of God into our vulgar English.” After a long imprisonment Tyndale suffered death by strangulation and burning. Grafton was imprisoned in 1540 for printing a large folio Old and New Testament known as the “Great Bible.” This tremendous task of printing was accomplished by Grafton in partnership with Edward Whitechurch at Paris and London.
Shortly after this the prejudice against an English translation was partly overcome, and in 1543 Parliament passed an act allowing the Bible to be read by certain classes, but forbidding women, apprentices, journeymen, husbandmen or laborers to read it privately or openly.
THE FIRST PSALTER IN ENGLISH
Printed at London about 1565 by Christopher Barker