William Caxton: A Biography

"In this biography I have described and discussed every known Caxton document and edition, both intrinsically and in relation to the events, persons, and movements of contemporary history in which Caxton was so intimately involved. I have tried to rectify the disconcertingly many established and hitherto unsuspected errors of fact or inference in the work of WIlliam Blades, E.G. Duff, W.J.B. Crotch and others, to bring new light and truth to all aspects of Caxton's career from independent study of the primary sources, and to write for the general reader, the student, and the specialist scholar alike. New conclusions are reached on Caxton's family connections, his early activities as apprentice in London and cloth-trader at Bruges, his appointment and fall as Governor of the English merchants in the Low Countries, his diplomatic missions in the protracted trade negotiations of the 1460s, his discovery of his vocation for writing anf printing, his relationships with his instructor Johann Veldener and Colard Mansion his associate, and the foundation and chronology of his first press at Bruges. I show that it was from Mansion and the Bruges scribal tradition that Caxton borrowed and adapted his practices, otherwise unique among fifteenth-century printers, of writing his own translations for publication, obtaining commissions for these and other works from royal or noble patrons, and introducing them with original prologues and epilogues as a vehicle for political or personal propaganda on behalf of his clients. Caxton's hitherto unrealised function as a Yorkist and Tudor propagandist is explored in detail as a major key to his entire career as a printer. New information is given on the sources and authorship of Caxton texts previously misattributed, and dates are supplied on new typographical and other evidence for many of Caxton's undated editions."--Foreword.