Making the Caxton Brand: an Examination of the Role of the Brand Name in Early Modern Publishing

MAKING THE CAXTON BRAND: AN EXAMINATION OF THE ROLE OF THE BRAND NAME IN EARLY MODERN PUBLISHING JONATHAN MARTIN MPHIL THE UNIVERSITY OF YORK DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND RELATED LITERATURE OCTOBER 2010 ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the utility of applying the concept of the “brand” to literary and biographical studies via an exploration of the career of England’s first printer of vernacular texts - William Caxton (active c.1473-1492). Presently, the brand is generally conceived as an interface between commerce and culture. Recent work by Naomi Klein and Celia Lury has suggested that the goal of the brand is to engender a lifestyle – or, rather, to become a culture unto itself. Generally, perhaps rightly, this view arouses considerable suspicion about the role of branding in everyday life. As tension between Art and Commerce (articulated by Pierre Bourdieu in The Rules of Art) is present in many aspects of literary criticism (particularly biography), it is common to find that figures like William Caxton often have their non-commercial activities marginalized on account of their business practices. My work seeks to address this problem by rejecting the either/or tension between Art and Commerce in favor of a new, more inclusive model centered on the brand. The brand, in contrast to the current, dominant paradigm, is a multi-faceted entity that operates in aesthetic and commercial spheres simultaneously. By using the brand as a model for biographical and historiographical studies, we are able to ascribe both of these aspects to an individual without negating the whole. As Michael Saenger has observed: “The idea of an artless publisher may be as much of a myth as the idea of a noncommercial artist.” Accordingly, I recognize the necessary interconnectedness of artistic and commercial production, and propose that we approach Caxton (and his legacy) as we would explore the evolution of any other brand. By addressing a figure, or a body of work, as a brand, we are free to remove the weight of critical wrangling over Art and Commerce, and, instead, focus on the interconnected nature of literary and commercial activities without prejudice. It is hoped that, in so doing, we will allow for more complete studies of literary publishers and printers like William Caxton. TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments ii INTRODUCTION iii CHAPTER 1 Brands and Book History 1 CHAPTER 2 The Life of the Caxton Brand: Examining Caxton’s Paratexts in Detail 55 CHAPTER 3 Wynkyn de Worde and the “Afterlife” of the Caxton Brand 140 EPILOGUE 175 BIBLIOGRAPHY 178 Martin ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS “Can’t write a letter. Can’t send no postcard. I can’t write nothing at all.” - Talking Heads “Life During Wartime” “When I was young and full of grace – Spirited, a rattlesnake – When I was young and fever fell – My spirit, I will not tell – You’re on your honor not to tell: I believe in coyotes, And time as an abstract.” - R.E.M. “I Believe” For my coyotes… Nora, Dad, Julie, and Dianna. I believe, and I love. Martin iii INTRODUCTION The introduction of printing in the West during the mid-fifteenth century heralded many changes in European society. Among the gradual increases in education and literacy, as well as myriad literary and scientific achievements, the rise of a new form of capitalism – one built in part on brand name entities – was concurrent with the rise of the publishing business in the late-Fifteenth and early- Sixteenth centuries. While the brand name is often thought of as being a product of the industrial revolutions of the Nineteenth Century, its underlying structures and networks of operation can be found at work in the publishing business of Fifteenth Century English entrepreneurs like William Caxton. Caxton’s career is particularly interesting as it foreshadows what would later become a trend, among printers and publishers, of moving away from a patronage-driven economy toward a market- driven economy. Caxton’s largely speculative publishing agenda relied on his ability to interface with the social aspirations of the emergent middle class, the varied desires of the aristocracy, and his networks of craftspeople and traders. What sets Caxton apart, however, are his extensive paratexts, and – in a near-first for England – a printer’s device that marked his works as distinct from similar commodities. Additionally, the Fifteenth Century saw a rising interest in vernacular books among the merchant and laboring classes, as well as significant increases in women’s literacy, which Caxton wholly encouraged and supported with his publishing. All of these factors combine to make Caxton a pivotal figure in the histories of publishing and the brand name, and one that is entirely deserving of a fresh look. Therefore, this dissertation is intended to focus on the creation of the Caxton brand, and the ways in which this brand reflects the broader social and cultural changes at work during the incunabular period in England. Through this Martin iv examination of Caxton’s brand, this study intends to demonstrate the ways in which the history of branding might be profitably extended into the Early-Modern period in England for the purpose of developing a fuller picture of the interconnected networks of commercial and artistic production that found a locus in the printed book. Central to this discussion will be the belief that the brand is a construct that is uniquely suited for the discussion of the history of literary texts, as the study of brands is a study of the marriage of commercial and aesthetic projects – something that is particularly useful for the history of literary publishing. The study of any publisher goes beyond the person in question and his or her output. Such a study naturally encompasses business decisions, public reaction, literary culture, politics, and various other socio-cultural factors – some of which operate independently of the publisher’s designs. For this reason, I have chosen to build my study of Caxton around the brand, as brands are continuously built (and rebuilt) by these same processes. Indeed, it is my belief that the brand is a natural consequence of the capital (cultural and economic) that accretes during a cycle of production and consumption. Because of this, brands can be influenced, or even partially designed, but never avoided altogether. They are, I will argue, a necessary part of both cultural and economic commerce, and also the symbolic containers of our own economic and aesthetic preferences within the marketplace. Therefore, by moving the focus of critical and literary inquiry from Caxton the man to Caxton the brand, we are creating a framework that is better suited to assess the totality of Caxton’s output and its historical impact, and one which emphasizes the interconnected (and often intersubjective) nature of commercial and aesthetic production. Martin v I will continue this introduction by discussing contemporary scholarship on the histories of the book and printing, and then I will augment this discussion by examining the role of the publisher with respect to the creation of a new marketplace for books that was driven in large part by its readership. In particular, I will look at the rise of readership among the merchant classes, the ways in which Caxton’s embrace of the vernacular expanded the reading public, and the economic conditions that governed both the quality of printed texts and the size of print runs. Finally, I will set the stage for our discussion of Caxton by looking at some recent scholarship on his place in the history of printing, and the ways in which this scholarship might be expanded by embracing some of the tools of brand history. I. From Scriptoria to Printing House: An Overview of Scholarship on the Emergence of Printing and the Work of Johannes Gutenberg With respect to understanding the change that books and their readers experienced in the mid-fifteenth century, it is useful to consider the emergence of the role of the Publisher during Caxton’s time in England. Inititally, those who – like Gutenberg – produced books were simply regarded as printers. Along with a host of compositors, rubricators, and other such craftspeople, books were assembled and printed with little paratextual intrusion or improvement. In this, we can infer that printed books were intended to satisfy existing market demands (that is, the demands of the market for manuscripts), and not to lead the creation of new markets or methods of usage or consumption. However, the division of responsibilities between printer and publisher began to become increasingly defined during the last three decades of the fifteenth century, particularly in Caxton’s workshop at Westminster, and finally culminated in the fully-articulated role of Publisher during the early Martin vi sixteenth century when Caxton’s successor – Wynkyn de Worde – was actively working. The so-called “printing revolution” is a source of ongoing contention within the fields of bibliography and literary criticism. Recent work on the history of the book has largely focused on the gradual, accumulative change in the marketplace for books, rather than on the idea that the move from script to print was radical and instantaneous. In order to contextualize the history of the debate surrounding the degree of change brought about by print, it is useful to examine a recent exchange in the American Historical Review Forum between Elizabeth Eisenstein and Adrian Johns. Eisenstein’s article “An Unacknowledged Revolution Revisited” is a response to Johns’ (1998) The Nature of the Book as well as the criticism that has stemmed from her own assertion that the printing press represented an agent of radical and sweeping cultural change. In her own words: My work was not intended to be framed by either the history of the book or the history of reading.

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