Resources

Early printed books at Senate House Library

Most books in the Caxton exhibition came from the Sterling Library, of first and fine editions of English literature from the 15th to the 21st centuries.

Other collections represented:


All can be requested to view in the Special Collections reading room during standard opening hours.

What did Caxton print?

The best resource for a Caxton bibliography is the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue (ISTC):

https://data.cerl.org/istc


This covers all printers of the fifteenth century. For English print beyond that, see the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC):

https://datb.cerl.org/estc


For more detail about Caxton’s imprints in the British Library, see BMC11:
Lotte Hellinga, Catalogue of Books Printed in the XVth Century now in the British Library (BMC). Part XI: England (2007)

Reading Caxton

Read digital surrogates of Caxton’s imprints on the full-text database Early English Books Online (EEBO). This is a subscription database and you will need library membership.

Researching Caxton

Books and articles about Caxton, early printing in England in England, and developments after Caxton are legion. Look up books and articles in the following databases:

  • Book History Online
  • Brepolis Medieval and Early Modern Bibliographies
  • Brill Book Archive
  • MLA International Bibliography

To find monographs about Caxton at Senate House Library browse the subject “Caxton, William”. For English printing more broadly, browse the subjects:

  • Printing – England – History – To 1500;
  • Publishers and publishing – England – History – To 1500.

To go beyond the fifteenth century, change the date restriction, or omit it:

  • Printing – England – History
  • Publishers and publishing – England – History – 16th century

The early printing press

The printing press worked in the same way throughout Europe throughout the early modern period. See how in this short video from the Plantin Moretus Museum in Antwerp: