Books and their makers during the Middle Ages : $b A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman empire to the close of the seventeenth century, Vol. IIPutnam, George Haven
History
Books and their makers during the Middle Ages : $b A study of the conditions of the production and distribution of literature from the fall of the Roman empire to the close of the seventeenth century, Vol. II
Putnam, George Haven
Books -- History -- 400-1450; Copyright; Freedom of the press -- History -- To 1500; Manuscripts; Printers
The demand for printed books in England, a demand which had, as we have
seen, antedated the establishment of Caxton’s Press at Westminster, was
much greater than could be satisfied by either Caxton, or his immediate
successors, De Worde and Richard Pynson, and the importation of books
from Paris, Rouen, Bruges, Antwerp, Cologne, and other continental
cities, increased steadily during the last part of the fifteenth
and the first portion of the sixteenth century. Of a number of the
English publications of this period, the editions were printed on the
Continent especially for the English market. Humphreys cites, among
other instances, a series of missals printed in 1516 by Olivier of
Rouen for the church of York, and an edition of the _Chronicles of
England_ printed (in English) in Antwerp, in 1493, by Gerard Leew.[59]
These Rouen missals were among the last of the Roman Catholic books
of service printed abroad for the use of the English churches, as, in
1534, these churches adopted the _Ritual of the Reformation_. The title
of the chronicles reads, “_Chronycles of the Lond of Englond_.”
=Printing in Oxford.=--The second printing-office established in
England was that of Oxford. The authority on the earlier history of
printing in Oxford is the treatise and comprehensive bibliography of
Mr. Madan, published in 1895, under the title of _The Early Oxford
Press_. Some of the earlier historians of the University had claimed
for the Oxford Press an earlier date than that of Caxton’s undertaking.
This claim has rested almost entirely on the date 1468, which appears
in the colophon of a treatise on the Apostles’ Creed, which treatise,
says Madan, was undoubtedly the first product of the Oxford Press.
The authorship of the volume as printed is ascribed to S. Jerome, and
it is so referred to by Humphreys and other writers. Madan points
out, however, that the actual author was Tyranneus Rufinus. It is his
conclusion that the date 1468 (which is nine years earlier than the
date of the first Caxton publication) is undoubtedly an error, and an
error probably due to a single misprint.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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