In Our Time - Caxton and the Printing Press

Episode Date: October 18, 2012

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and influence of William Caxton, the merchant who brought the printing press to the British Isles. After spending several years working as a printer in Bruges, Caxton returned to London and in 1476 set up his first printing press in Westminster, and also imported and sold other printed books. Caxton concentrated on producing popular books that he knew would sell, such as Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' and small liturgical 'books of hours'. The standard of Caxton's printing may have lagged behind that on the continent, but he was a skilful businessman and unusually for printers at the time, he managed not to go bankrupt. The advent of print is now seen as one of the great revolutions in intellectual history - although many scholars believe it was a revolution that took many generations to have an effect.With:Richard Gameson Professor of the History of the Book at the University of DurhamJulia Boffey Professor of Medieval Studies in the English Department at Queen Mary, University of LondonDavid Rundle Member of the History Faculty at the University of OxfordProducer: Natalia Fernandez.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello, more than 500 years ago, with England still locked into the Wars of the Roses, a merchant called William Caxton,

set up shop not far from where I am now, in the city of Westminster. Although he was an experienced businessman, Kaxson's trade on this occasion was fairly new to him and entirely new to England. He became a printer, and his printing press in Westminster in 1476 was the first in the country. It was a good 20 years since Johannes Gutenberg in Germany had developed a printing technology and his invention had already spread to other countries in Europe,

Italy, France and Belgium. But Kaxson was the first to bring the phenomenon of print to these shores. He was also the first to print a book in English, the Canterbury Tales, work that's never been out of print since. But what impact did the printing press have on the production of books, on literary taste, on libraries, and on the English language itself? With me to discuss Caxson, Richard Jameson, Professor of the History of the Book at the University of Durham,

Julia Bofy, Professor of Medieval Studies in the English Department at Queen Mary University of London, and David Rondell, a member of the History of Faculty at the University of Oxford. Richard Jameson, Kackson, was middle-aged before he became a printer, In those days, he could have been dead, couldn't it really? It was in his fortus. Indeed. We know a little bit about Caxton's life,

both from what he tells us in his own prefaces to his work, but in particular because he's quite well documented as a merchant in his earlier life. We can make inferences from this information, and it's likely he was born about 14, or the early 1420s, and then he appears in the documentary record by 1438 when he's become a Mercer, so a member of the cloth. trade and luxury cloth as well as simpler textiles. And at that stage he's apprenticed to a certain Robert Large in London. Now Large was a high-ranking merchant and eventually rose to be Lord Mayor of

London, which suggests that Caxston was perhaps from a well-established textile background. That's just an inference. Certainly by about 1450 he had joined the merchant adventurers, so had become a textile dealer or a dealer abroad and was based in Bruges. And we know something of his financial value at that stage because he is a joint surety appears in documents because he's been involved in underwriting a loan of about £100 which is a massive amount of money. By 1462 we know from the records that he has risen to be

governor of the English nation in Bruges. What does that mean? Well, it was a relatively, it was a very newly established post. and the various nations, the various nationalities involved in trade in Bruges, had representatives that were responsible for internal ordering, but also for representing their interests to the Duchy of Burgundy. And in Kaxton's case, in addition, he acted as a crown official, and we see him on a couple of occasions negotiating trade relations between Burgundy and England, trying to bring an end to an embargo upon trade,

and also dealing with an exchange rate. and he continued in this role until events seem to have got the better of him. Before we move on, can you tell us why he was attracted to Bruges? Well, Bruges was a cosmopolitan centre, a very flourishing commercial centre. In the 15th century, too. In the 15th century.

And it was one of the wealthiest cities in the Duchy of Burgundy, and it grew wealthy as a commercial centre. And there were representatives of Italy, of Spain, of Germany, of Germany, of Germany there, and although we know that Kaxston moved around, it was a premier commercial site and so a logical place to be. Richard, Julia, Julia Buffy said he was getting tired, he was about to move from Boucher, but let's go slightly back in the story. Can we talk about the beginning of printing in Europe, in Germany?

Yes, well, from what we know, experiments with printing, this is printing with movable type rather than stamping something, with a block of type, were going on from about 1435 in Strasbourg and places like that. By the 1450s, Johann Gutenberg had established himself in Mainz on the Rhine in Germany and was experimenting, continuing to do the things that he'd been exploring until then. And from what we know, it was a conjunction of various aspects of the technology that goes along with printing, primarily being able to make movable type and being able to make this in...

So when you cut it in woodblock, which they did before, you got the A in the woodblock and the A was for life. That's right. Whereas if you got a movable A, you could put it in all sorts of words along the line, take it out and put it in again. Exactly. Very expensive, though. So to be able to produce type that you can keep,

that you can change, that you can set up and then take out and use again, is a real change in the technology. Other developments were going on, the perfection of a kind of press that would work, developments of the screw press, like you would have with cheese or pressing grapes or something like that, but which works for printing,

developments in the manufacture of ink and the kind of alloy you use to make your types with as well. So Gutenberg was presumably exploring all these things, and by about 1455, had perfected things sufficiently to be able to produce his wonderful Bible. It's fascinating... I'm obviously sorry.

It's fascinating how technology yet again drives culture again and again. It drives and defines it. One of the things perhaps for a moment is paper. The cheapness and abundance of paper was available at this time. Yes. That's another development that seems to have gone along with all these other things that Gutenberg was able to cash in on, as it were. Sorry.

Richard's talked about Kaxson as a very important man in Bruges, as far as English as concerned, and he became a wealthy man who's a successful. Why did he become interested in? interested in this fugitive new technology existing somewhere else in Germany? I don't think it was as fugitive as all that. It had spread down the Rhine from Mainz. Other printers had established themselves in other centres. Printing had established itself in Strasbourg. By the 1460s, Kaxton had probably heard about printing in the low countries as well.

We know that a couple of copies, I think, of the Gutenberg Bible made their way to London fairly early in the, well, fairly soon after it was printed and were decorated in London, interestingly, for people who wanted a kind of amalgam of printing technology and manuscript enhancement of that. So Kaxton would have heard about it. He was moving in circles where people bought expensive books in Bruges. It would have been something in the air, I think,

and he might have decided that this was both an interesting cultural development and also a great commercial opportunity. Was there evidence at that time because we have many examples of printers going bankrupt. Was there evidence at that time that printers were making the sort of money he was used to making? It was a substantial figure, Kekshund, wasn't he? I don't really know.

I think what you say about printers going bankrupt and printers moving around seems to continue in the next few decades of printing, really. So that's perhaps hard to answer. But I would imagine someone, with a sort of far-sighted view of where things might go and where they might be able to develop a business, where they might be able to make a change

to some kind of work that they were interested in and committed to. So he went to Cologne to investigate this new film and comparatively knew. Well, he went to Cologne anyway. He went to Cologne. Do we know what decided him that this is where he would put his energies? He was in his early 40s,

as I mentioned rather casually, perhaps too casually earlier, that was about the life expectation of people at that time. And he was taking on something new and difficult and so on. We know that things were difficult in England at this time, and we know that he'd ceased to be governor of the English nation in Bruges. Someone else had taken over, John Pickering, I think, another Mercer. So perhaps he was thinking to himself,

I need a new direction, I need to go somewhere else. He went to Cologne. He found Veldon. Johann Valdiner, who was a punch cutter or type founder, who was able to supply types, he was able to work with these people, see what they were up to, see the kinds of books they produced. And as far as we know, produced some books himself in Cologne.

In 1496, I think it is, Winkend to Word, who was one of Caxton's successors and took over his business, talked in one of the books he produced about Caxton having printed a volume of Bartholomeus Anglicus in Cologne early in his life. So this sounds as if what Caxton was up to in Cologne was having a go at producing books then. When we say printed before I move on, do we know that Caxon got down to it himself?

Did he move the print around? Was he at a sharp end? Or did he say to these chaps, will you do this for me, please, and I'll pay a good money? I guess he must have known what went on with it. but I guess he had compositors who did the labour for him. There would be other people doing that

and doing the handiwork, as it were. David Rundle, Kaxon established his first print shop in Bruges in the early 1470s, so he went back to Bruges. Did he have a business plan at this point? First of all, it may be Bruges, but it may also be Ghent. A recent research suggests that he may not have gone back to Bruges, but to Ghent. and that in itself might be interesting. This is later research which has not reached my notes.

It's that later. Yeah, it's that recent. Exactly. Yes, fine. Just the other day. But it is usually said they went back to Bruges, which would be an obvious place for what he's doing. What Julia just said about what was produced in Cologne,

these were Latin books for an international audience. Two of the texts were by Englishmen, but they were Latin texts which could circulate widely. When he gets to Bruges, he's concentrating more on French texts, but also on English texts. So texts which would not have an interest on the continent and would only be for an English market back in London. Did French have a circulation akin to, if not as bigger as Latin at that time?

More localised but international. And certainly, French was a language of England still. So in that sense, the books which is producing in French, could be for an English market as well as for a French or for a low country's market. The English books are the exception to this. Those are the ones which could only have been of interest to English people on the continent or more likely to English men and women back in England. What's interesting there is why do it in Bruges?

Why not go straight over and get a set of printing press in England? But of course, as Richard has said previously, Bruges is an international centre. It's a significant centre and with good communication routes to England. Effectively, the channel there is not a barrier.

It's a connection. And so there's a sense in which you can get to that market quite easily while still being on the continent and so also with some of the other works getting to an international audience. Richard at the beginning of the programme Hinted, Northern Hinted,

referred to the wealth connections that Caxon seems to have had. The person who was apprenticed to became a Lord Mayor of London, and so on and so forth. We learned that he had an association with Margaret of York from Burgundy, and how did he set about getting that patronage and how important was it to him? He does have patronage from Margaret of York,

who becomes the wife Charles of Bolden and the Duchess of Burgundy, and he mentioned this in his first English printed book the history of Troy. He mentions there that he'd been translating this for years. It sounds as if it's sort of a hobbied hat to sit down and translate it. He gave up on it that he says he showed it to the Duchess. What was the phrase he used to dispel idleness? Which in itself is actually a trope.

Often if people are writing a book, they're saying they're doing this to avoid being idle. And actually what he says in that preface is full of tropes, is full of expressions that you find in so many other places, which Kamik is slightly suspicious of it. So he says, he presented it to Margaret, Margaret looked at it, and said, ah, no, you have to change that.

That's not quite right, and go on and finish it. And he claims that he's writing it because she commanded him to finish it. He also says there. Just tell us what this book is. I mean, the stories of those who escaped from Troy, and it was thought like, and they had kids. came to Europe and Western Europe and set up the greatness of Europe as it was then beginning to think itself.

Exactly. And this is a French version of those stories which he's translating into English. Very popular. Yeah, the romances about Troy are very popular generally. What's interesting in this particular case, of course, is that he's choosing to translate from French into English. Whether he is getting a pension from Margaret of York, but whether it's actually specifically

to assist him in doing this work and whether there's some sense in which there's patronage for this book, whether it's a commission, that's more open to question. Too often we can read prefaces ingenuously and imagine that they do demonstrate

a strong connection with a supposed patron. One of the distinguishing factors about Kaxson and the number of his prefaces to book so we know quite a lot about him and the book business trade, whatever we want to call it, from his prefaces. Back to you, Richard Gammon.

How technically complex was the printing process in the 15th century? Well, perhaps if I just outline the elements of it and then comment on what this implied for bookmaking, as we've heard earlier on, the key thing was the making of the movable type. So you had to design your type, cut it in reverse, set it. When you were a compositor, you were setting the text in reverse, first of all in little composing sticks, and then transferring it to the bed of the printing press proper.

and at that stage you might readjust it to give a more agribble outlined, so justification. Then, of course, the paper is laid down on a frame, then it's pressed. And that's repeated 300 times for each individual page. If we think about the implications of that process, well, in the first case, it's very expensive up front. So the materials you need, the press, the type, that's a lot of money. and whereas in the old manuscript age, one scribe copying one book is fairly cheap, you had to have a lot of capital up front to print.

Secondly, one of the myths is that printing is more accurate than copying by hand in manuscripts. But what we have to remember is it is still a human being copying from a manuscript in type and he's doing it back to front and upside down. I've got a trivial, trivial,

going through my head. Ginger Rogers said she did everything Fred Astaire did, except she did it backwards on high heels. Now, where did that come from? No, we don't know. And so you have 300 copies that are identical, but not necessarily more accurate. And the other thing is, as a printer or as a publisher, and we might think of Kacton as a publisher,

you had to be very clear about how many copies you were going to print and make an informed estimate, because as you printed each page, you took the print apart, so you couldn't then run on if it sold well. And if you estimated too many, you were left with stock and went bankrupt. If you estimated too few, you didn't maximise your profit. He seems to have been far better than most of that, doesn't it? But we'll go into that, I hope, later.

Julie Boffey, the big move, he moves his print business from Bruges to London to Westminster. A breezy, quarter of an hour walk from here. What was his motivation for doing that? To try the English market, obviously, as David suggested. Did he bring the presses over in a boat? I mean, did he put these great lump and stuff in? He must have somehow had them brought over and installed himself. The really interesting decision is Westminster, I think,

because everyone thinks of Caxton and they think, oh, London, and printing, but it's actually Westminster, which is outside the city of London. And he perhaps was thinking, there's Westminster Abbey, There's a Benedictine foundation there. There's all the business that will go with that. Printing indulgences and Lives of Saints and all that stuff that you did. All that kind of stuff. We know that Benedictines had been very deeply involved in printing on the continent and continued to be.

He's got the seat of government, as it were. There's all the trade going on coming out of Westminster Hall there. But he's still not in the city of London. So it's quite an interesting decision to set himself up there. Does you lose by not being in the city, Julia? I don't think he does at that stage. It's interesting that later printers do move themselves into the city of 1500. Is there also an element that he is therefore outside any guild restrictions

on scribes and traditional bookmaking within the old city of London? I mean you get out of the unions. Exactly. And equally, if he is importing significant quantities of books, it gives him more freedom, again, from trade regulations by being based outside the restrictions of the city of London. There's also another factor, isn't there, which is that around Westminster Abbey,

just like around St Paul's, is a book trade centre already. So there are bookstores with books, including imported printing books, being sold in the city of Westminster, as well as in the city of London. So in that sense, actually, is a centre already. Yes, so it's a sort of double market.

Well, we know he advertised in the city. We know he printed advertisements that got pinned up, so he clearly had different ways of distributing what he printed. So he's advertising, I'm advertising the back of his own books. David Rundle, can we go into the books he produced in London? Absolutely. Obviously what we remember are mainly, are the books that he produces in English. For those, he's looking back generations to Chaucer,

who he is involved in the process of establishing as the father of the English language. Can you just pause, from a moment there. How is he establishing Chaucer was very well known in manuscript form. There are many manuscript versions of the country portrayals. So what did Caxson do to several of you, I was only three of you,

well, still three, several, I suppose, to establish Chaucer as a father of English Church. What did printing do to make that a reality? It may not be what printing does, but it's that he in print is doing what other scribes could have

done earlier, adding to that, though by the fact of his prefaces or his epilogues in one example Chaucer's translation of Borethius constellation of philosophy, he adds at the end a comment about Chaucer's tomb in Westminster Abbey, just next to where he is, and adds also a Latin epitaph to him written by humanist Stefano Souragoni. And that's produced on the last page. Again, there was a sense there,

that he's recognizing the position that Chaucer already has, but building on it. So he's not creating the reputation of Chaucer. He's building on that reputation. So we have that. Can we develop the Canterbury Tales? There's much more to say there. He did it. It was a successive.

It's one of the cases where he produces. I don't want to be Caxon Canterbury Tales program. No. He did a lot more. We're a bit more on Canterbury Tales. Yes. It's an interesting case where we have a second edition. where there's no preface in the first edition, but there is in the second.

And this tells us a rather interesting story. It shows Kaxston's admiration for Chaucer and then explains that after he'd done his first edition, soon after arriving in Westminster, one of the purchasers, a gentleman, and he's always concerned to stress the credentials of his purchasers, compared it with a manuscript and found certain discrepancies, went back to William Kackston, so Kaxton tells us, and said, well, my father, in fact, has the best available manuscript of Chaucer's works. If you will agree to print a second edition, then I'll let you do it from this manuscript. We do have that second edition, and there are minor changes,

but they are fairly minor ones in terms of the text, a bit of reordering and so on. The most important change in the second edition is that it adds a series of woodcuts, images of the pilgrims themselves, and is a much more visually attractive volume. So do we actually believe this story? There might be some truth in it, but it's almost certainly a marketing ploy and goes back to the point I was making earlier. Clearly, Kaxton had printed, let us say, 300 copies of the first edition,

knew he could sell more, but needs to do something new to ensure that the second edition of 1483 will sell to a broad market, including some of the original purchases, adding illustrations and saying this text is the text is an interesting way of marketing it. David. I was just going to say, making it new, but also making it closer to manuscripts.

Because manuscripts, of course, have a tradition of images of the pilgrims where the problem with printed books is that usually they're more monochrome and actually adding in something like this, brings it back closer to manuscript culture. Julia. I think it's interesting to see Kaxton being effectively an editor as well here, and you can see this in other works. And to move to another of Chaucer's poems,

the House of Fame is left by Chaucer in manuscript, unfinished for whatever reason, or perhaps he ends it at a point that makes it seem unfinished. Kaxton comes along and supplies an ending in his copy and writes Kaxston next to it. So he can interpose himself into these things. Julia, can you, and the other two chipping, can we give the listeners an idea of the range of his application?

Can you retails got there in one? just like he got there with the Trojans. He obviously had an eye for what was popular and classy at the same time and developed that. And he was a man of substance in terms of his thought. But he published a lot else. So can you just go across quickly the waterfront of what he published? He published 110 books after all, and away we go.

We can start on this in all. There's translations from the French, the Great Burgundian literature. There's the English literature. We shouldn't overlook the fact that he did Latin service books as well, Books of Ours. In this way. We're talking about Gower, John Lydgate, but also more recent. So Anthony Woodville, Earl Rivers, the brother to Edward VIII's wife. He publishes his translations, but the Latin service books. And although they were always a part of his work, they were surely a bigger part than is now represented, because we've just lost copies at the Reformation. And then in addition, he also did what we might.

class as books of manners, morals, to improve your life. I mean, there's a rather nice one called Stanspure at Mensam, which is about manners for the youth, and there's the Book of the Night of the Tower, which is addressed more to young ladies than young men. One called Little John, or the book of courtesy as well, which I rather like. The other point, I think, is that he printed histories. The market for histories is huge.

there's a prose history of Britain called the Brute, which exists in numerous manuscript copies. We know that was very popular. And Kaxton printed that in 1480 and added something of his own which brought it further up to date. And then the Polychronican, a world history as well,

which he printed in 1882. David Rundle. I'm just thinking, but we mustn't also forget the small printings. You mentioned indulgences earlier. He's doing that sort of broadshy. publishing and he's also doing small publications which are commissions it seems

but also we might think about what he's not doing if you look at his people who become his competitors or the other publishers John Lettou in London Theorette Rood in Oxford for a while then Richard Pinson there's his emphasis on English Katz's emphasis in English is very unusual

but also there's a lack of there are very few school texts and there are very few legal texts and those are big markets for printed books. Richard, can I... So do you want to say in the night... I was still beginning to say that that's absolutely right and we have to remember that what Kaxton is printing is fitting into what he knows can be imported and this is against a background of large imports from the continent

of high status Latin text that can be used in universities and he's positioning himself within the market to fill what he can perceive as a single. games. But he's bringing that in. He's playing all ends. That's the interesting thing about him. I don't mean in any cynical way. He's importing books. He's exporting books. He's printing books. He's reprinting. He's also doing things. He's sort of setting

the template for what will become the move forward in English literature. For instance, this is from your note. So there you go. Mort D'Arthur, the manuscript didn't turn up until 20th century, but he has printed it, and so we have the printed version and the idea of Mort DArthur, which travel right through the centuries, we can say

due to his nose for publishing as well as printing. That's right. And he would identify that as the sort of courtly romance literature that had been so successful in translations from the French and is a new text. And what is the advantage for someone like Caxton, if he has a new text that nobody else has access to, he has a monopoly on it.

And we can look at his spread of works and those that he particularly translated and favoured publishing, and there are things that on the whole he would have as a monopoly. Did the cheapness, over Drundle, as it might seem, of the printed book, impinge on buyers of books immediately?

Before Capson arrives. Books are being imported into England before Caxon sets up his printing press and continues throughout the 15th, 16th century. England is, effectively, in terms of printing a backwater, despite

Kaxon, Pinson, all the others lots of text would need to be imported. But the key advantage, of course, for importing, for movement, is that they are light, they can be shipped in barrels, several

copies together, there will be moving unbound. The fact that they're on paper rather than parchment, as manuscripts often would have made them light, and therefore also cheaper. The impact of That is actually the concept of what is an acceptable library in terms of numbers of books multiplies. That's an interesting footnote, isn't it?

The way that the actual physical library change, which one of you wants to say that? Because I found that fascinating. You, go on doing it. I'm happy to talk about that. I mean, the physical library changes. If you think of a library room, the 15th century library would usually be a rectangular room with a series of lecterns with the books placed underneath. When you get, and a large library, several hundred books.

When you get into print several thousand books, two impacts. First of all, they throw out some of the old books because they're old. And so we're losing manuscripts because of that, even though manuscripts continue to be made alongside this. But secondly, they have to redesign the library. and what they do is actually disastrous for the light in the library because they build up above the lecterns to make store. And there are a couple of other factors here.

One is that people are aware of books being shelved upright on their shelves and that only really becomes feasible the way we store books. Once you've moved over to paper as the body of the book, most books in parchment will be stored flat in some sense, lying on lectern or stored flat. But this cheapness, I mean quite soon afterwards when Tindle is getting the, New Testament coming to this country in the 1520s, which is very soon afterwards.

We're getting loads coming in terms of 6,000 copies are coming over, and it becomes unstoppable and challenges the English state as well as the then English consensus of religion. So the mass of stuff that is now enabled by printing has an enormous effect on history as well as culture. Well, a comment there is that this is the world in which Kaxton is increasingly competing, and we know that when he is trying to find his niche for English books, that in fact some of his contemporaries are importing thousands of books.

We have a chap Peter of Savoy, who during Haxston's lifetime, imports over a thousand books, and that's just what we can see from the records themselves. Julia, Boffey, can we go into this rather intricate subject? Well, not intricate, but a bit tricky. Scholars have attributed the beginnings of the standardization of the English language. Isn't Patrick Kackson in his publications? Would you go along with that?

I don't think so entirely, no. Kaxston has quite a lot to say about the English language. He talks about the kind of English he uses and the kind of English he finds in the texts he prints. He characterises himself as someone rude and unlearned. He's very good at talking about himself in this way, and it's a trope, as David's talked about other kinds of tropes that he used. This kind of vain modesty, really, yeah.

He says at the beginning of his edition of the Polychronican, this translated world history, Kaxton didn't translate it, but he inherited the translation from John Treviso, who'd made it in the 14th century. He says, I find the English a bit rude and old in this book, so I'm going to change it in my printed edition. But what he does is by no means consistent or standard. He changes a few words here and there, but he doesn't engage in any kind of, scholarly program of updating this thing. What about spelling? Well, there's an element with spelling

whereby it could be subservient to typesetting because, to start with, Kaxton doesn't even attempt to justify lines, or at least his workshop doesn't. What do you mean by that? So we're used to text which left and right-hand margin are straight lines. Right. His workshop doesn't until about the 1480s

attempt to do this. But one of the devices you could use for justification for making lines longer was adding an extra E or an extra S in the middle of the word. So whereas on the one hand, you've got 300 copies... So a lot of our E's and S's and Q's news coming filling up the line. Your typesetter could decide to add in extra letters, put an E at the end of Queen or not, if it would be useful to justify the line itself. This is a sort of scholarship we're all interested in it.

But there is another point here, which of course is, there are not many rivals to what he does. Certainly not many rivals outside the southeast. And this is quite interesting in the spread of printing in England contrasts to France say, particularly to Germany

for understandable reasons. But you don't have in the 15th century, well in the 15th century you have Westminster, London, Oxford, St. Albans. And those are the four places. You're not moving very far. Now, obviously, not all of that, only a minority of all of that, is in English anyway, but you're not getting the other varieties being printed.

What happens, it seems to me, from what you've written, is that Kekston, let's take Canterbury, in the South East, and as you said, just around the South East, is establishing something, and the written word is beginning to become, I agree with the Jewish text of one, beginning to misunderstand in this area. So we say English is standardized, but it's written English, because spoken English is still as varied and as various up to the First World War, really. Yes, yes. And in a way the distinction here is that if you're printing books in 300 copies, to survive you need not just to sell to your immediate audience, but to ship them around the country.

And so whereas a hundred years earlier a scribe, let us say, in Durham might have copied a manuscript imposing his own spelling, we know that the monks of Durham were buying books that had come in to Oxford or from London itself, so that version of the spelling unchanged is now being used in quite different locations. Did Kaxson have a view of the currents of thought? Let's take humanism, the attempt to bring classical learning into play of European culture and science.

Did he have any sense that that was going on and try to respond to it, encourage it, be part of it? This is a really interesting question because, of course, sometimes we would connect the printing press with new learning as a Renaissance development indeed from Francis Bacon onwards we think of it in those terms. But

it's not necessarily a friend of humanism generally and actually the point that Richard said at the very beginning about the problems you can have with a text. This is when printed, they can be printed wrongly and then it becomes very dangerous. That's the point that humanists make. They use the printing press but they're also concerned about it. In terms of

Kaxston in particular it's often said that actually he's using it in the interests of medieval culture, not Renaissance culture, a terrible dichotomy, which we shouldn't really use at all. And there are some examples of his connection with Italian humanists who are working in England. I mentioned Suagone earlier, but there are also Pietro Camilliano, who's really significant as secretary to Henry the 7th. there's also a prince of work by Lorenzo Travasani who is the first person to teach humanist eloquence in Cambridge

but also with Englishmen associated with humanism like John Russell, Bishop of Lincoln and all the more important John Tiptoff Earl of Worcester who was for some time Constable England and got the Fenley nickname of the Butcher of England for his exercises killing people off in that role but in those cases the question would be

how far he's connecting to them as humanists or how far is he connecting to them because of their existence for other reasons and it seems in particularly with people like Tiptoff and John Russell it's not to the humanist interest

Julia Boffey manuscript the production manuscripts didn't just cease it took a long he went on was there a can you tell us how long it went on on and how powerful it remained by how long sorry Sorry, lots of questions.

And also, were people around saying, oh, it'll never catch on this technology? I've got this bloke who copies things out from me just down the road. It's much cheaper and it can do it in a month and get anything I want out of him. Is that going on as well? I think that is going on. And manuscript production continues for centuries for particular purposes, and it's all too easy to forget this. Scribes who at first might have seemed worried that they were going to be out of jobs,

weren't out of jobs because plenty of things needed to be copied by hands. still that could be printed. And Rich has already said that manuscripts could be much more accurate. Yes, and manuscripts could also be much more beautiful. If you wanted to give someone a present, you might well give them a beautifully produced manuscript. And that's key. That's key. Patronage isn't served well by printed books. If you want to impress a potential patron, something produced in black and white without any pictures is not really the way to do it. And what's interesting is both that scholars like Erasmus will use manuscripts, or they'll have painted copies.

They'll have illuminated copies of their printed books. And the other issue there is, of course, you can't always get the printed book when you want it. You remember that they're produced in runs, then they go out of print. But a scribe never goes out of print. So if you wanted a particular text that was out of print, you had the printed text copied by a scribe. Yeah, but let's not forget that the deluge was the printed book it came through.

I mentioned Tyndall, but others like it. They're coming through in their thousands. It was. But the thing that finally killed off the scribe was not the printed book. It was the typewriter. Long time, I know. Yes. It has a lot to...

I knew the typewriter. I'd love to answer. There's a question here that was... I'd like to raise out. I wonder if it makes any sense. Because of the development and widespread use and reliance on printing,

as time went on, did the printed word begin to have a greater authority than the spoken word, or did it reinforce that authority which had been growing for a long time? I think the answer to that must be look at literacy mates. Most people are going to be getting their information orally.

They're not going to be getting it as the written word. I'm not talking about how people are educated. I'm talking about the authority that they vest in the spoken word vis-a-vis the printed word. It's down there in black and white, as it were. That sort of... That is an important point, although knowing what is there in black and white is often dependent on people telling you.

what's there. I suppose we'd also be moving on to reformation changes and the presence of a Bible in every parish church. But authority doesn't, legal authority in particular is not simply expressed through the presence of the written word, but through a set of different coins, etc. And the written word can still be a manuscript written word, can't it? And thinking of how manuscript retains its currency today, if you get a certificate for something, it's usually been copied by someone, by a calligraph. You don't get a printed one. So there's still a distinction there. And that's very important also, actually. If you think about how diplomatic correspondence occurs,

often it's written and then somebody and then the person sending it will write in their own hand and the fact is in their own hand matters. Yes. You have any comment on this, Richard? Not at all. You're passing. Durham is silent. Well, that must say something.

Kaxon died in 1491. His business went to one of his protégé was Wync de Verde, who stayed there for a long time, about 30 or 40 years. But after Caxson, it seems there are very few Englishmen. Germans and people from other nationalities are coming to this country to carry on that tradition. Well, the printing tradition as a whole was mainly, the people who actually operated the presses who worked it

seemed to have been non-native English people. Winkend DeWerd, who you mention, we believe that he came from the low countries, from a town near modern Gouda, and he was, we believe Kaxton's foreman. He takes up residence in Westminster in about 1479 and he takes over the business in due course. And the change that he...

Does it flurry? Yes, well, he first of all seems to print for Kaxton's heirs who are involved in a legal dispute until about 14, or the end, for five or six years after Kaxon's death. Then in the 1490s, Winkender Word, is still printing the sorts of things. things on the whole that Caxton had been doing. But by 1500, 1501, he seems to have had a rethink of the business strategy. And alongside works for an elevated clientele, he's increasingly doing educational works,

pamphlets, smaller scale works. And at that stage, he actually abandons Westminster and moves to the city of London to Fleet Street. As many of them do. Indeed. And so we have that thing going on. and is the Gutenberg gull? Oh, it isn't time. I'm crossed hands in the thing over there,

which means I've got half a minute left, which means I've got 30... Whatever it is. Thank you very much all of you. Next time. David Rundle, Richard Gamson, and Julie Boppy. Thank you very much indeed. Next week we'll be talking about

Fermat's last theorem. I'm surprised we haven't done it before, but we haven't. That's next week. Thanks for listening. There are many more Radio 4, arts and discussion programmes to download for free. Find these.

on the website at BBC.co.ukuk slash radio four.