Caxton, William c.1422-c.1491
English printer

He was born in the Weald of Kent, possibly at Tenterden. In 1438 he was apprenticed to a London mercer, went to Bruges in 1446, and in 1471 attached himself to the household of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, Edward IV's sister. He probably learned the art of printing when he was in Cologne (1471-72). In Bruges he joined with the Flemish calligrapher Colard Mansion to set up a press, and in 1474-75 he printed the first book in English, the Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, which he himself had translated. The Game and Playe of the Chesse was another of his earliest publications. Late in 1476 he set up his wooden press in Westminster. The Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (1477), translated from the French by the 2nd Earl Rivers, is the first book proved to have been printed in England. He began to use woodcut illustrations around 1480. Of about 100 books printed by him, over a third survive in unique copies or fragments only. Among the important books to come from his press were two editions of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, John Gower's Confessio Amantis, and Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur.