A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898 — John Shaqi
A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898Plomer, Henry R. (Henry Robert)
History
A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898
Plomer, Henry R. (Henry Robert)
England -- Imprints; Printing -- England -- History
No work dated 1486 has been traced to Caxton's press, but in 1487 he
brought into use type 5, a smaller form of the black letter fount known
as No. 3, with which he sometimes used a set of Lombardic capitals. With
this he printed, between 1487 and 1489, several important books, among
them the _Royal Book_, a folio of 162 leaves, illustrated with six small
illustrations, the _Book of Good Manners_, the first edition of the
_Directorium Sacerdotum_, and the _Speculum Vitæ Christi_. During 1487
also he had printed for him at Paris an edition of the _Sarum Missal_,
from the press of George Maynyal, the first book in which he used his
well-known device. The second edition of the _Golden Legend_ is believed
to have been published in 1488, and to about the same time belongs the
Indulgence which Henry Bradshaw discovered in the University Library,
Cambridge, and which seems to have been struck off in a hurry on the
nearest piece of blank paper, which happened to be the last page of a
copy of the _Colloquium peccatoris et Crucifixi J. C._, printed at
Antwerp. This was not the only remarkable find which that master of the
art of bibliography made in connection with Caxton. On a waste sheet of
a copy of the _Fifteen Oes_, he noticed what appeared to be a set off of
another book, and on closer inspection this turned out to be a page of a
Book of Hours, of which no copy has ever been found. It appeared to have
been printed in type 5, was surrounded by borders, and was no doubt the
edition which Wynkyn de Worde reprinted in 1494.
In 1489 Caxton began to use another type known as No. 6, cast from the
matrices of No. 2 and 2*, but a shade smaller, and easily
distinguishable by the lowercase 'w,' which is entirely different in
character from that used in the earlier fount. With this he printed on
the 14th July 1489, the _Faytts of Armes and Chivalry_, and between that
date and the day of his death three romances, the _Foure Sons of Aymon_,
_Blanchardin_, and _Eneydos_; the second editions of _Reynard the Fox_,
the _Book of Courtesy_, the _Mirror of the World_, and the _Directorium
Sacerdotum_, and the third edition of the _Dictes and Sayinges_. To the
same period belong the editions of the _Art and Craft to Know Well to
Die_, the _Ars Moriendi_, and the _Vitas Patrum_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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