1471 ‘And for as moche as in the wrytyng of the same’, he wrote when he had finished, ‘my penne is worn, myn hande wery and not sted-fast, myn eyen dimmed with overmoche lokyng on the white paper.’ Caxton, a prosperous mercer (fine cloth merchant) and diplomat, had started the work in Bruges with the encouragement of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV of England, and when she approved the result, her courtiers wanted copies too. Clearly if Caxton was going to oblige them – not to mention sell further copies – he was going to have to make use of the new technology of printing (see 23 February).
The Recueil des histoires de Troye by Raoul le Fèvre was one of those medieval romance versions of ancient myth, like Le Roman de Thèbes (1150–55) or Le Roman de Troie (1155–60) by Benoît de Sainte-Maure. A ‘recueil’ is a compilation, and the Receuil scooped up Greek mythology along with the Fall of Troy, strictly speaking considered a part of the Roman story, in which the Duchy of Burgundy itself – like Britain – was supposed to have followed on that cataclysmic event.
To acquire a press, and hire the artisans who knew how to run it, Caxton went to Cologne in Germany, where he finished his translation. Back to Bruges, he set up the press, and by late 1473 or early the following year he had completed production of the Recuyell, the first book to be printed in English. But he was more a publisher than a printer; which meant that he was constantly on the lookout for new titles (some of which he translated himself ) and new markets to sell them in. As publishing claimed more and more of his time and interest, he realised that books in English would sell best in London; so there he moved in 1475 or early 1476, setting up his press in the precincts of Westminster Abbey.
Once in England, Caxton imported printed books from France and Flanders, but he also produced more chivalric and historical romances, as well as religious tracts and pamphlets. But for modern readers his masterpiece was the first edition of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales (1478, second edition, 1483).
Caxton’s Chaucer was as crucial to the development of English literature as Dante’s Divine Comedy was to Italian: it allowed literature to be in the language people actually spoke and heard around them, rather than in some official lingo. In a period when French was still the conventional language of literature in England, Caxton’s Chaucer proved that the full range of high and low styles – serious and comic, ironic and straight – could be achieved only in that glorious mixture of French, Latin and Anglo-Saxon that make up the English language.
And it’s important not to miss the connection between the merchant adventurer, his sense of the demand (even Margaret of Burgundy preferred to read her stories in English) and the technology he mastered in order to bring the product to market. It was no accident that modern English literature was born along with the printing press.