THE father of English printing, William Caxton brought the first printing press to our shores and was instrumental in coining the phrase ‘that f**king printer’s f**king broken again’.
But it has recently come to light that his aim in doing so was not to enlighten masses with translations of The Iliad, but to bring the great gift of the celebrity memoir to Britons hungry for scandal.
A letter from Caxton to old friend Margaret of York, back in his former home of Bruges, said: “My dear Duchess, you would not believe the success ye booke enjoys. It is as if merely having one on a shelf makes one look intelligent and cultured.
“But while my press roars with The Canterbury Tales and Aesop’s Fables, I feel its true destiny is to publish the real, unexpurgated tales of those known to everyone but in their own words.
“I once again implore you to think upon my offer of publishing your life story. I understand you fear it uninteresting, but I have an intuition that its mundanity will only make it sell more, especially around Christmastime.
“There is of course the illiteracy problem. But just as the ancient monk’s manuscripts were illuminated with Biblical illustration, so do I apprehend these tomes containing images of the writer themselves, perhaps of their previous tonsures or abdominal muscles.
“As you are a busy woman, there is no need for you personally to set quill to vellum. A scribe could be tasked with producing a manuscript which you then simply claim to be your own.
“I even predict they would not need to be read as such, but merely gifted to others, kept in the garderobe for a discreet time and then passed on. My only concern is printing the name in gold leaf on ye cover, which I feel to be paramount.”
Sadly Margaret never did compose her memoir, nor did Caxton’s account of being ‘ye shagger of Bruges’ ever see print. But his ideas allowed Margery Kempe to publish her very own tell-all of her sexual temptations, which proved a Q4 hit.
Next week: to Easter Island circa 1250, when an anonymous stonemason began to craft souvenirs ‘to encourage the tourist trade’.
