De Worde was born in
Wœrth in
Alsace; the name by which he is generally known means "Wynkyn of Wœrth." Traditionally, he was believed to have accompanied Caxton on Caxton's arrival in
England in 1476; more recently, it has been argued that de Worde actually arrived c. 1481, and that Caxton brought him to England to counter the competition of a second printer. (John Lettou set up a press in London in 1480.) De Worde improved the quality of Caxton's product; he was, in this view, "England's first typographer." In
1495, following Caxton's death in 1491 and a three-year litigation, de Worde took over Caxton's print shop.
De Worde is generally credited for moving English printing away from its late-Medieval beginnings and toward a modern model of functioning. Caxton had depended on noble patrons to sustain his enterprise; while de Worde enjoyed the support of patrons too (principally
Margaret Beaufort, mother of King
Henry VII), he shifted his emphasis to the creation of relatively inexpensive books for a commercial audience and the beginnings of a mass market. Where Caxton had used paper imported from the Low Countries, de Worde exploited the product of John Tate, the first English papermaker. De Worde published more than 400 books in over 800 editions (though some are extant only in single copies and many others are extremely rare). His greatest success, in terms of volume, was the Latin grammar of Robert Whittington, which he issued in 155 editions. Religious works dominated his output, in keeping with the tenor of the time; but de Worde also printed volumes ranging from romantic novels to poetry (he published the work of
John Skelton and
Stephen Hawes), and from children's books to volumes on household practice and animal husbandry. He innovated in the use of illustrations: while only about 20 of Caxton's editions contained woodcuts, 500 of de Worde's editions were illustrated.
He moved his firm from Caxton's location in Westminster to London; he was the first printer to set up a site on
Fleet Street (
1500), which for centuries became synonymous with printing. He was also the first man to build a book stall in
St. Paul's Churchyard, which soon became a center of the book trade in London.
De Worde was the first to use
italic type (1528) and
Hebrew and
Arabic characters (1524) in English books; and his 1495 version of
Polychronicon by
Ranulf Higdon was the first English work to use
movable type to print music.
His name lives on via the "Wynkyn de Worde Society," founded in the United Kingdom in 1957 for "people dedicated to excellence in all aspects of printing and the various stages of its creation, production, finishing and dissemination."
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