William Caxton was the first English printer. He was born in 1422 at Kent and died in 1491. He served an apprenticeship to Robert Large, a London mercer. On the death of his master William Caxton went into business for himself at Bruges. He was appointed about 1463 governor at Bruges to the London Association of Merchant Adventurers. About 1471 he entered the service of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV.
He now learned the newly-discovered art of printing, probably at Cologne; and his Recuyell of the Histories of Troy, the translation of a popular mediaeval romance, was printed about 1474, probably at Bruges, and is the earliest specimen of typography in the English language. His Game and Playe of the Chesse, Bruges, 1475, is the second English book printed. In 1476 he returned to England, and in 1477 printed at Westminster The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, the first book printed in England. In fourteen years he printed nearly 80 separate books, nearly all of folio size, some of which passed through two editions, and a few through three.
He translated twenty-one books, mainly romances, from the French, and one (Reynard the Fox) from the Dutch, helping materially to fix the literary language. He was patronized by Edward IV, Richard III, and Henry VII; and he was on intimate terms with Earl Rivers, the Earl of Worcester, and others of the nobility, the two noblemen named having even translated works for his press. Besides the works named above he printed Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Troylus and Creside, Book of Fame, and translation of Boethius; Gower's Confessio Amantis; works by Lydgate; Malory's King Arthur; the Golden Legend ; The Fables of AEsop; erc.
His books have no title-pages, but are frequently provided with prologues and colophons. His types are in the Gothic character, and copied so closely from the handwriting of his time, that many of his books have been mistaken for manuscript. In some no punctuation is used; in others the full point and colon only; commas are represented by a long or short upright line.
*William Channing
William Ellery Channing was an American theologian and writer. He was born in 1780 at Massachusetts and died in 1842. Educated at Harvard from 1798 until 1800 he was a private instructor in Richmond, studied theology at Cambridge and was settled over the Federal Street Church in Boston in 1803, where he became the leader of the Unitarian movement then stirring New England, and active in all the philanthropic enterprises of the time. Research William Caxton
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