Wynkyn de Worde began his printing career in London as an associate of William Caxton, and before his death in 1535 at an advanced age (he was married and settled in England by 1479), issued over 700 works. He was one of the first printers to set up business in the Fleet Street area, which when Moran's essay first appeared in 1960 was still a printing centre. When a revised edition appeared in 1976, two years before Moran's death, this was still true, but things have changed since. Similarly, there have been radical developments in the study of early printing in England. This new edition declares that since 1976 “much more progress has been made in studies on many aspects of the work of Wynkyn de Worde. To bring Moran's work up to date, many of the details of what was so confidently and elegantly written by him would now have to be changed, to the point that it is no longer possible to use his text as the basis for a new version. … After forty years it has to be understood as a historical document in its own right”.
Moran's work therefore comes with a very strong health warning and cannot be used as an up‐to‐date reference source. For example, in their brief introduction, Hellinga and Erler, two eminent scholars of early printing, mention how Moran's statement that Wynkyn came from Lorraine is now discredited (Woerden in Holland is a more likely birthplace than Wörth in Alsace). Further, the map of Fleet Street and its environs in this book places Wynkyn's business firmly on the north side of the street, but when Moran was writing it was thought to be on the south side, and he states this accordingly. So why buy this publication, shot through with errors? Just as a hundred copies of the 1960 edition were reserved for members of the Wynkyn de Worde Society (founded 1957) 350 copies of the 1,050 copies comprising the current edition are likewise reserved. This publication is in a real sense an act of piety to a founding member of the Society. It is a beautifully produced hardback, with only two typographic errors that I can spot: “atempt” for “attempt” on p. 21, and “léarned” for “learned” on p. 41. It is also well illustrated. For such an object, the price of £12.95 is relatively modest.
Moran's text is a slim work, coming in at just over 28 pages, and the real scholarly meat in this edition is the thirteen‐page chronological bibliography of works produced on Wynkyn de Worde since 1732. This provides a base from which to find out more on the printer, counterbalancing what Moran might say. Of the 164 entries, 77 items have been issued since the first appearance of Moran's text, and no fewer than 56 have appeared since 1976, which shows how discoveries continue to be made and new interpretations postulated. Where content is concerned, this must be the primary reason for libraries and individuals to buy this book.
