biography
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1422–c.1491)
|
| biography:
| The first English printer, born possibly in Tenterden, in the Weald of Kent, SE England, UK. He was trained in London as a cloth merchant, and lived in Bruges (1441–70). In Cologne he probably learned the art of printing (1471–2), and soon after printed the first book in English, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye (1475). About the end of 1476 he set up his wooden press at Westminster, and produced the Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (1477), the first book printed in England. Of about 100 books printed by him, including the Canterbury Tales, over a third survive only in unique copies or fragments. |
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