His biography appears here in The Oxbridge Pursuivant blog because of the importance of books in the symbols of Oxford and Cambridge and their colleges. Both Oxford and Cambridge have a book at the center of their coats of arms, as described and explained in Oxford College Arms, p. 6.
The Oxford University arms are dated to c. 1400 although the university itself dates back to before 1100. If the arms are that old, the bible at the center would have to have been hand-written, because the printing press using movable type had been invented by Mainz goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg until 1450.
Book printing was skill primarily restricted to Germans and the Latin (starting with the famous Gutenberg Bible) and German languages. In his spare time Caxton translated books. He was living in Cologne, Germany when he translated a book about the history of Troy.
Caxton was delighted at the possibility of avoiding copying his book over and over to sell it. So he mastered the technology for printing books and published The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye in 1475, when he was 53. When he returned to England, he established the first English printing press, printing available English literature, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in 1478. Brits once called printed books "Caxtons."
Today, books in English greatly outnumber those in Germany. Of the five greatest libraries in the world, two are in the United States, two are in Britain and one is in Paris. I have been a registered reader in all five, and the hardest one to use, by far (and not because of the difference in language, but rather concern for the user), is the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
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