Early Printed BooksDuff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
History
Early Printed Books
Duff, E. Gordon (Edward Gordon)
Incunabula -- Bibliography; Printing -- History -- Origin and antecedents
These were followed by the _Polycronicon_, the _Chronicles of England_
(edit. 2), _Burgh’s Cato_, and the second edition of the _Game of the
Chesse_, which is illustrated with woodcuts, the first edition having
none. There are altogether sixteen different woodcuts used in the
volume, and eight occur twice.
Between 1483 and the end of 1485, Caxton was at his very busiest,
issuing in that time about twenty-two books; and amongst them are some
of the most important. There are the _Pilgrimage of the Soul_, the
_Festial_ and _Quattuor Sermones_, the _Sex Epistolæ_, of which the
unique copy is now in the British Museum; the _Lyfe of Our Lady_, the
second edition of the _Canterbury Tales_ (the first with woodcuts),
Chaucer’s _Troilus and Cresida_ and _Hous of Fame_, the _Confessio
Amantis_, the _Knight of the Tower_, and _Æsop’s Fables_. This book,
which appeared 26th March 1484, has a full page frontispiece and no
less than 185 woodcuts, the work of two, if not three, different
cutters. They are of the very poorest execution, and not original in
design, being more or less carefully copied from a foreign edition.
The whole of the earlier part of 1485 must have been expended upon the
production of the _Golden Legend_, the largest book which issued from
Caxton’s press. It contains 449 leaves, and is printed on a much larger
sheet than was generally used by Caxton for folios, the full sheet
measuring as much as 24 inches by 16 inches. It has, as illustrations,
a large cut for the frontispiece, representing heaven, and two
series of eighteen large and fifty-two small cuts, the large series
including one of the device of the Earl of Arundel, to whom the book is
dedicated. Most copies of the _Golden Legend_ now in existence are made
up partly of this and partly of the second edition. As far as can be
judged, the distinguishing mark is the type of the headlines, which in
the first edition are in type 3, and in the second edition in type 5.
No copy is known made up entirely of one edition.
For the latter part of 1485 we have three dated books, the _Morte
d’Arthur_ (31st July), the only perfect copy of which is now,
unfortunately, in America; the _Life of Charles the Great_ (1st
December), the only existing copy of which is in the British Museum;
and _The Knight Paris and the Fair Vienne_ (19th December), of which
again the only known copy is in the British Museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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