PREFACE.
A life of Caxton must of necessity be little more than an account of his work. As in the case of the great inventor Gutenberg, nothing but a few documents are connected with his name. In those days of tedious communication and imperfect learning, the new art was considered as merely a means of mechanically producing manuscripts, which the general public must have looked on with apathy. By the time that its vast importance was fully perceived, the personal history of the pioneers was lost.
Caxton, however, indulged now and then in little pieces of personal expression in his prefaces, which, if they tell us little of his life, throw a certain amount of pleasant light on his character.
In the present book I have tried to avoid as far as possible the merely mechanical bibliographical detail, which has been relegated in an abridged form to an appendix, and have confined myself to a more general description of the books, especially of those not hitherto correctly or fully described.
Since William Blades compiled his great work, The Life and Typography of William Caxton, some discoveries have been made and some errors corrected, but his book must always remain the main authority on the subject, the solid foundation for the history of our first printer.
Where I have pointed out mistakes in his book or filled up omissions, it is in no spirit of fault-finding, but rather the desire of a worker in the same field to add a few stones to the great monument he has built.
Chain Bridge, Berwyn, May, 1902.