William Caxton (1422-1491), was the first English printer ever. As well as the first English retailer of books, his contemporaries were all Dutch, German, or French.
His travels as a merchant introduced him to the new printing industry and he was heavily influenced by German printing.
He wasted no time in setting up a printing press in Bruges, in collaboration with a Fleming, Colard Mansion, on which the first book to be printed in English was produced in 1475: Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye, a translation by Caxton himself.
He set up a press in Westminster, England in 1476.
Dictes or Sayengis of the Philosophres (Sayings of the Philosophers, first printed on November 18, 1477), written by none other than Earl Rivers, the king's brother-in-law.
Caxton's translation of the Golden Legend, published in 1483, and The Book of the Knight in the Tower, published 1484, contain perhaps the earliest verses of the Bible to be printed in English, rather than copied.
The most important works printed by Caxton were Le Morte d'Arthur and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. He produced two editions of The Canterbury Tales.
Caxton is credited with standardising the English language (that is, homogenising regional dialects) through printing. This was said to have led to expansion of English vocabulary, the development of accidence and syntax, and the ever-widening gap between the spoken and the written word.
Game and Playe of the Chesse
A Verbatim Reprint of the First Edition, 1474
Lucas Cranach the Elder- 1472-1553 -friend of Martin Luther
-Called to Wittenberg by the electors of saxony
-Operated a studio, a printing office, a bookshop, and a paper mill
-served twice as mayor
- Put a great deal of energy into the reformation by portraying it in books & broadsheet
Albrecht Dürer (b. May 21, 1471, Imperial Free City of Nürnberg [Germany]--d. April 6, 1528, Nürnberg), German painter, printmaker, draughtsman and art theorist, generally regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist.
Began as an apprentice to his father, a goldstmith, in 1485, but his earliest known work, one of his many self portraits, was made in 1484.
Most likely helped in the illustration and layout of the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 as a youth.
In 1498 Dürer published Latin and German of The Apocalypse, to which he supplied 15 outstanding woodcuts. This earned 27 year old
Dürer, renown throughout Europe.
Johann Gutenburg, born in Mainz, Germany, about in the 14th century. He is the most important person in the history of typography because around 1450 he brought together the complex systems and subsystems necessary to print a typography book.
Exiled from his town, he relocated in Strasbourg, where he became a successful and prosperous gem cutter and metalworker.
In early 1438 Gutenberg formed a contractual partnership with Andreas Dritzehen, who received gem-cutting training from Gutenberg and Andrea Hellmann who owned a paper mill. He showed them the secret for making mirrows, postponing of five years his contract with them.
When Dritzehen died, in late 1438, his brother Georg and Claus, sued Gutenberg for either admission on the partnership or a refund. On December 1439,the court ruled in Gutenberg’s favor because his original contract specified that only one hundred florins would be paid to any partner’s heirs.
In the mid-1440s Gutenberg moved back to Mainz, where he resolved the technical, organizational, and production problems that had plagued earlier typography printing efforts .He had labored for ten years before his first printing and twenty years before printing the first typography book, called the forty-two-line Bible.
On January 1465, Archbishop Adolf of Mainz, appointed Gutenberg courtier with the rank of nobleman.
Like many innovators, he was running a heartbeat ahead of his time, drifted into bankruptcy he died the 3rd of February of 1468.
Martin Luther 1483 - 1546, dealt the symbolic blow that began the Reformation when he nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Church. That document contained an attack on papal abuses and the sale of indulgences by church officials.
But Luther himself saw the Reformation as something far more important than a revolt against ecclesiastical abuses. He believed it was a fight for the gospel. Luther even stated that he would have happily yielded every point of dispute to the Pope, if only the Pope had affirmed the gospel.
And at the heart of the gospel, in Luther's estimation, was the doctrine of justification by faith--the teaching that Christ's own righteousness is imputed to those who believe, and on that ground alone, they are accepted by God.
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