LEWIS, John.
The Life of Mayster Wyllyam Caxton, of the Weald of Kent; the first Printer in England …
London: Printed in the Year 1737.
8vo, pp. xxii, 156, [2 (errata)], with an engraved frontispiece ‘portrait’ of Caxton by Bagford, and two plates of Caxton’s watermarks at the end; woodcut headpieces and initials; a fine, crisp copy, in contemporary panelled, speckled calf, speckled edges, red morocco label; armorial bookplate of the MP, mathematician, astronomer, and bibliophile Sir George Shuckburgh-Eveleyn (1754–1804), with shelfmarks H4 and 32C; early manuscript additions to the bibliography on pp. 151'2.
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The Life of Mayster Wyllyam Caxton, of the Weald of Kent; the first Printer in England …
An excellent copy of the first biography of an English printer, one of 150 copies printed, for distribution largely to Lewis’s friends and fellow antiquaries.
Schoolmaster turned curate and antiquary John Lewis (1675–1747) had published an edition of Wyclif’s New Testament in 1731, which included a lengthy history of the Bible in English, in which he was assisted by his friends Joseph Ames, Thomas Baker, and Peter Thompson. Thompson and Ames also provided help with the present biography of Caxton, notable for its accuracy and fine detail. The fictitious portrait of Caxton was engraved by John Bagford for his never realized history of printing, of which the Proposals appear in the bibliography of ‘Writers on the Art of Printing’ here. Added in manuscript are Incunabula typographiae (1688), Maittaire’s history of printing in Paris 1717, and Atkyns’s Original and Growth of Printing (1664), the first publication on the subject in English.
Provenance: Sir George Shuckburgh formed a valuable collection of early printing that included at least one Caxton and the first Gutenberg Bible to reach America.
