The Printer & the Pardoner : An Unrecorded Indulgence Printed by William Caxton for the Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross

Library of Congress, Washington, first edition, 1986. Cloth, 4to, 29 cm. 101 pp, [1] folded leaf of plates. From the blurb: "In a remarkable feat of synthesis and historical imagination, Needham weaves together the stories of William Caxton, the wealthy cloth merchant who at fifty years of age mastered the newly invented art of printing and took the craft to England, of the broadside indulgence he printed, and of the institution he printed it for. The most common surviving form of early job-printing, indulgence instruments were used to raise funds for the Roman church and its institutions. The Printer & the Pardoner: An Unrecorded Indulgence Printed by William Caxton for the Hospital of St, Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross tells the story of that hospital, notorious for fund-raising activities carried on by such as Chaucer's Pardoner. Literary history, church history, printing history, and political and social history intersect in the study of the Rounceval indulgence. This newly discovered broadside from Caxton's shop becomes the forty-fourth item in a new census of Caxton imprints, published as Appendix D in The Printer & the Pardoner. This "Checklist of Caxton's Printing" includes 111 items, printed in Cologne, Bruges, Westminster, and Paris. It identifies every known piece of printing done by William Caxton and ranges them in a chronological sequence based on Needham's bibliographical researches. The text of the St. Mary Rounceval indulgence is presented in Appendix A. All thirteen vellum strips are reproduced on a foldout page at the same size as the originals. Appendix B lists representative Caxton tract volumes, both extant and dispersed. These are volumes containing groups of separate editions, which came into the covers of single bindings either in the bookshop or when an owner gathered a group of unbound books or pamphlets and had a binding put on them. Considered as units, such volumes can suggest a great deal about the marketing of the books. Appendix C, ''Binder's Waste and Caxton's Printing," lists thirteen examples of Caxton's printing surviving solely through their preservation in bindings. Nineteen black-and-white illustrations include - besides the thirteen vellum strips of the Rounceval indulgence itself - depictions of the Pardoner from the Ellesmere Chaucer and the second edition of The Canterbury Tales (1483). a marginal illumination from "Piers Plowman" of a priest holding a pardon, views from the City of London to Westminster, of Charing Cross, and of the hospital of St. Mary Rounceval, the seal of the hospital, and drawings by Margaret R. Brown illustrating how quire guards are sewn .into a binding." Contents include: Preface; William Caxton, England's First Printer; The Rosenwald Sammelband and Other Caxton Tract Volumes; An Unrecorded Caxton Indulgence Preserved as Binder's Waste; Early Indulgence Printing and Its Survival; Indulgence Printing in England; The Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval; Indulgences Issued by St. Mary Rounceval; The Rosenwald Sammelband Revisited; Notes; Appendix A: The Text of the St. Mary Rounceval Indulgence; Appendix B: Caxton Tract Volumes - A Sample List; Appendix C: Binder s Waste and Caxton's Printing; Appendix D: Checklist of Caxton's Printing. Near Fine in Near Fine dustwrapper.