Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
- Title
- Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye
- Heading
- Homage by imitation
- Description
-
Caxton’s first translation, and the first book to be printed in English, was Raoul Lefèvre’s fifteenth-century French courtly romance Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1474). Using an edition printed by Wynkyn de Worde and borrowed from Quaritch as their copy, the Kelmscott Press issued an edition in November 1892.
William Morris's short-lived but famous Kelmscott Press (1891-1898) fuelled late-Victorian enthusiasm for Caxton. In a way it reflected Caxton: in A Short History of English Printing, 1476-1898, the bibliographer Henry Plomer described the career of the Kelmscott Press as the culminating episode in a story that started with Caxton in 1476. ‘Caxton’s books’ had been William Morris’s immediate response to what to print at the Kelmscott Press. Ultimately five of the Press’s 53 titles were Caxtons: The Golden Legend and The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1892) and The Order of Chivalry, Reynard the Fox, and The History Of Godefrey Of Boloyne (1893). Morris’s interest in Caxton at the Kelmscott Press pertained entirely to content. Morris had replicated Caxton’s fourth type in The Story of Gunnlaug the Worm-Tongue (privately printed at the Chiswick Press, 1891), but Caxton’s books were not aesthetically appealing, and Morris drew his typographical inspiration from such fifteenth-century German printers as Peter Schoeffer, Anton Koberger and Günther Zainer.
This particular response to Caxton was for connoisseurs. The Recuyell was printed in 305 copies. The 300 paper copies cost nine guineas each, the five on vellum vellum, eighty pounds. - Author
- Raoul Lefèvre
- Place of Publication
- Hammersmith
- Publisher
- Kelmscott Press
- Date of Publication
- 1892
- Format
- Folio
- Century
- 19th
- Illustrations
- Woodcut