ABSTRACT
The earliest extant printed view of the City of London is a woodcut by the West-minster artist and engraver Winkin de Worde. [Fig. 2] In de Worde's woodcut, circa 1497, London is portrayed as it often is in word and image: a city of spires behind its famous wall. In this image, the city seems to be represented from the west, an appropriate perspective for de Worde: he was a protégé of Caxton, who took over the latter's woodcutting and printing shop in Westminster (Hodnett 7). Thus, to get to the bookstalls in St. Paul's Yard, de Worde would have had to walk along the Strand (still a relatively undeveloped thoroughfare at the end of the fifteenth century) to Ludgate and the southwestern entrance to the City. The endpoint of this pedestrian route would seem to be the site depicted the 1497 woodcut.
