Illustrated books -- Bibliography; Illustration of books; Printing -- History
Among the earlier books printed by Caxton after he set up his press at
Westminster was Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_, of which later on he
printed a second edition which he imagined to be from a better text, and
ornamented with clumsy pictures of the pilgrims. He printed also in
separate volumes most of Chaucer's other works, including his
translation of Boethius, _De Consolatione Philosophiae;_ also Gower's
_Confessio Amantis_, some of the shorter poems of Lydgate, Malory's
_Morte d'Arthur_, and several translations of French romances (_Charles
the Great_, _Paris and Vienne_, the _Four Sons of Aymon_, etc.),
translations of _Aesop_ and of _Reynard the Fox_, Higden's
_Polychronicon_, and the _Chronicles of England_, the _Golden Legend_
(the name given to the great collection of Lives of the Saints by
Jacobus de Voragine), several editions of the Hours of the Blessed
Virgin, a Latin Psalter, a decorative edition of the Prayers called the
_Fifteen Oes_ with a border to every page (see Plate XXVII), numerous
moral treatises and books of devotion, and several Indulgences. In all
just one hundred books and documents issued from his press, printed in
eight different types (including that left behind at Bruges). More than
twenty of these books he had translated himself, and to others he
contributed interesting prologues or epilogues. While many printers on
the Continent easily surpassed him in typographical skill, few published
more books which can still be read with pleasure, and his prefaces and
epilogues show a real love of good literature (especially of Chaucer)
and abundant good sense, kindliness, and humour. Caxton died in 1491
while engaged on translating into English the Latin Lives of the
Fathers, and the account-books of the churchwardens of S. Margaret's,
Westminster, show that he was buried in its churchyard, four torches
being supplied at a cost of two shillings and sixpence, and another
sixpence being charged for the bell.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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