by Gertrude Burford Rawlings
New York D.Appleton and Company 1901
Street, and presently opened another place of business at the Sign of Our Lady of Pity, in St. Paul's
Churchyard.
Red Pale, and had issued the Dictes or Saymgis, and two
years before the city of London had attained to the
dignity of a printing-press, typography began to be
practised at Oxford, but by whom is not known, though
very possibly by Theodore Rood of Cologne. The first
Oxford Book was the Exposicio in Simbolum
Apostolorum of St. Jerome, a work which happens to be
dated 1468, and has thereby led some to assign to
Oxford the credit of having printed the first book in this
country. But that date is now acknowledged to be a
printer's error for 1478. A similar misprint led to a similar
error as to the first book printed in Venice. The Decor
Puellarum, executed by Nicolas Jensen, purports to have
appeared in 1461, and thus was at one time supposed
to be the first book printed in Venice, but the date is
now recognised as a misprint for 1471, which leaves
John of Spires the first Venetian printer and his Epistola
familiares of Cicero, 1469, the first Venetian printed
book.
Cambridge was more than forty years later than Oxford
in providing herself with a printing press.
In the same year that London began to print appeared
the first books from the press at the Abbey of St.
Albans, namely, Augustini Dacti elegancie, and the Nova
Rhetorica of Saona. As both were printed in 1480 it is
known, except that when Wynkyn de Worde reprinted the Chronicles of England from a copy printed at
St. Albans, he refers to him as the St. Albans "scole mayster." The famous Bokys of Haukying and
Huntyng, and also of Cootarmuris, commonly known as the Book of St. Albans, written by the
accomplished Juliana Berners, prioress of the neighboring nunnery of SopweIl, was printed at the
monastery in 1486, and reprinted ten years later by Wynkyn de Worde.