Explore "The Printers, Stationers and Bookbinders of Westminster and London from 1476 to 1535" by E. Gordon Duff on Textopian.
In the four lectures which I had the privilege of giving as Sandars Reader in the Lent term of 1899 I dealt with the printers, stationers, and bookbinders of London and Westminster in the fifteenth century. In the present series I propose to continue their history up to the year 1535.
The date which has been fixed upon is not a purely arbitrary one, but has been chosen for two reasons. In the first place, it is the year in which Wynkyn de Worde, by far the most important and prolific of all the early English printers, died, and secondly, it just includes and allows us to examine the remarkable change brought about in the English book trade by the passing of the Act relating to printers in the twenty-fifth year of Henry VIII, which came into force on Christmas-Day, 1534.