THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Before coming to our chronological list (such as it is) of classical and other books printed at the Universities and elsewhere, I will put together a few notes relating to the University Press which have occurred in the course of my investigations, as any adequate account of this institution is still a desideratum, and materials for such a sketch are scattered, if not scanty.

Edmund Carter in his Hist, of Camb. p. 467 (1753), having thrown out a hint that Caxton (whom he calls a native of Cambridgeshire) might have erected a press here, states that ‘the first Book we find an Account of, that was Printed here, is a Piece of Rhetoric, by one Gull. de Saona, a Minorite; Printed at Cambridge 1478, given by Archbp. Parker to Bennet College Library. It is in Folio, the Pages not Numbered, and without Ketch Word, or Signatures.’

This statement has been shewn to be fallacious. Not only was Caxton on his own testimony a man of Kent, but this Rhetorica Nova though ‘Compilatum … in alma Universitate Cantabrigie, Anno Domini 1478°,’ was ‘Impressum … apud Villam Sancti Albani, Anno Domini 1480.’