This year, we celebrate the 600th anniversary of the birth of William Caxton, the man who introduced the printing press to England. Caxton (1422-1491) was a wealthy trader whose business took him to Bruges and Hamburg. There he marvelled at the new printing presses, and decided to bring one to England. He translated (or at least oversaw the translation) of 26 works from Greek, Latin and French.
The most famous works published by Caxton were Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1483) and Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur (1485). The Warwickshire knight, Sir Thomas Mallory, had been dead for some years by the time his Arthurian writings came into the hands of Caxton.
