Saturday, September 19, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org
Caxton and the Early Press
William Caxton's own translations from his press at Westminster — the first books printed in English, in the printer's own prose.
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Texts
Blanchardyn and EglantineWilliam Caxton's 1489 English translation of the chivalric romance of Blanchardyn and Eglantine, made at the request of Lady Margaret Beaufort, completed from the Paris manuscript and Thomas Pope Goodwine's 1595 English version, with Leon Kellner's landmark 1890 study of Caxton's syntax and style, from Kellner's EETS edition.Charles the GreteWilliam Caxton's 1485 Middle English prose translation of the Charlemagne romance of Fierabras, in Herrtage's 1880-81 EETS edition.EneydosCaxton's 1490 prose Eneydos, englished from the French Livre des Eneydes, with his celebrated prologue on the instability of English — the egges-and-eyren story.The History of JasonCaxton's own prose translation (c. 1477) of Raoul Lefevre's French romance of Jason and the Golden Fleece, printed for the Order of Philip the Good of Burgundy; edited from EETS Extra Series 111 (1913) by John Munro, restored here from a HathiTrust OCR scan.