Recuyell of the historyes of Troye.. . . . by Raoul Lefèvre,
This month’s featured text is Recuyell of the historyes of Troye. . . by Raoul Lefèvre and translated and printed by William Caxton (c.1415-1492). Little is known of Caxton's early life. He was apprenticed to Robert Large, a London mercer (merchant of haberdashery, cloths, and silks) around 1438. As a member of a guild heavily involved with trade in the Netherlands, Caxton visited the Low Countries (then under the control of the Duke of Burgundy) where he likely learned to speak French and Dutch. In the 1460s, after the death of his master, Caxton settled in Bruges and eventually became governor of the nation of English for the Low Countries (the person in charge of managing all English merchants there). By 1471, Caxton was living in Cologne where he translated the Recuyell of the historyes of Troye from French and likely acquired a printing press which he brought back with him to establish a printing shop in Bruges and when he returned to England in 1476, he brought the press to London. By 1474, Caxton had finished the first printing of Recuyell of the historyes of Troye, and two years later, he had established a print shop at the sign of the Red Pale near Westminster Abbey where he continued to print editions of books like Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1478) and Thomas Mallory's Morte D'Artur (1485) among many other books. He died in March of 1492.

The Recuyell of the historyes of Troye was published in Burgundy in 1461 and was incredibly popular book among the nobility. Since Caxton was a well known merchant of the area, many fashionable English nobility asked Caxton to obtain copies for them. So, in order to make as many copies as possible, Caxton purchased the printing press and thus made Recuyell of the historyes of Troye the first book ever printed in the English language. At first, the church and government welcomed this new technology and commissioned Caxton to print a variety of different books and treatises as well as other books that Caxton wanted to print. Caxton was considered a printer "at liberty" meaning he did not have to pay taxes, and there were no restrictions on what he could print. Later, however, as the works of Martin Luther and other reformers started to print works contradictory to the status quo, governments began to restrict printing and required official authorization or "imprimatur" for reproducing works. Caxton himself though and early English printing was very much a creature of the late Middle Ages. Printing was used to reinforce rather than challenge the positions of the government and the church, and it was done mostly for a small number of fashionable patrons. The revolution of spreading ideas (both traditional and heretical) would not happen for another fifty years, and when the printing press realized its potential, it would change both the way ideas and information spread and the very foundations of early modern society.

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