William Caxton
- Title
- William Caxton
- Heading
- Exhibiting Caxton
- Description
-
Many less prominent publications appeared. Elliot Stock produced a facsimile edition of The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, with an introduction describing Caxton’s printing press as ‘a great marvel’, with ‘almost supernatural productions’ at which the cream of London society gazed in wonder. Biographies appeared or were reissued, most significantly typographer William Blades’s one-volume abridgement of his two-volume Life and Typography of William Caxton (1861-1863) as The Biography and Typography of William Caxton. The 47-page booklet featured here derives from William Blades’s work. Costing one shilling, it is one of several small publications targeting a wide audience. It states its purposes in nationalistic terms:
In consequence of the Caxton Celebration being held this year, and the Caxton Exhibition being in full progress at South Kensington, the question is frequently asked: “Who was Caxton?” It is hoped that the present slight sketch will give, in a cheap form, a sufficiently accurate and satisfactory account of one who was so great a benefactor to the English race.
The booklet makes clear that Caxton’s greatness arises to a large extent from the culture that arose through the technological innovation of printing:
Although Caxton, as the pioneer in England of the printing art, will ever be entitled to the undying gratitude of his country, his name will also be remembered as having been the principal agent in lifting English literature from its low position, and fostering the growth of a purer taste among his countrymen, which blossomed out during the following century in the greatest poets and writers the world has ever seen. - Author
- Bodleian Library
- Place of Publication
- Oxford
- Publisher
- Bodleian Library
- Date of Publication
- 1975
- Century
- 20th
- Illustrations
- n/a
- Link on Alma Digital
- image available from within Senate House Library only