Wynkyn de Worde

Wynkyn De Worde  (Jan van Wynkyn, 1477-1530) was William Caxton's assistant at the Westminster Press and successor after Caxton's death in 1491. Born in Alsace, he came to England with Caxton in 1476. Although he followed in Caxton's footsteps by printing classics, such as his edition of Trevisa's translation of  De proprietatibus rerum in 1495, his contributions to printing differ from Caxton's in some important ways. Unlike Caxton, who printed and translated literature pieces primarily for the upper class, de Worde branched out and printed inexpensive textbooks for the masses, as Textual Scholarship recalls when he moved his printing press to Fleet Street after 1500, "de Worde  began to to issue practical, cheap textbooks rather than the literary masterpieces of the earlier period. His was probably the first publishing house in which the school textbook division (grammars, primers,etc.) became the most profitable part of the organization" (107). He also helped shaped Modern English. In his edition of De proprietatibus, he replaced many older Middle English terms with the modern versions, as Textual Scholarship states, "But instead of merely reproducing all of its readings in fidelity to the text, de Worde consistently modernizes- changing, for example, cleped to called, wende to go, wone to dwell, ydedled to divided, fonge to receive" (107) Wynkyn's modernizing brought the English language closer to the English we recognize today. In terms of typography, he introduced italic type, and used type ornaments as well as greek and arabic typefaces. If I had to choose from all of the aforementioned, however, I would say his most significant contribution was printing educational books. By printing educational books and aiming them towards people outside the elite classes, de Worde reached a part of English society Caxton did not.