ABSTRACT
It has long been argued that one important aspect of William Caxton's activities as England's first printer was the influential moulding and cultivation of particular standards of taste. Scholars have pursued the subject of Caxton's interest in fashionable literature and his efforts to make it available to his English readers in the form of translations from French, and have explored the literary tastes which encouraged Caxton's formulation of a French-derived courtly prose style, and Caxton's own writings contain information about translating activities which made French texts available to English readers. The surviving evidence from the first decade of Wynkyn de Worde's independent business career suggests that he continued to follow Caxton's precedent, opting for longish texts with an established manuscript circulation. Antoine Verard's attempts to woo an English market almost certainly prompted the expenditure of greater energy on the part of de Worde and Richard Pynson in relation to French printers and the possibilities offered by French texts.
