Dictes and Sayings of The Philosophers - History

History

Caxton in 1476 travelled to Westminster from Bruges, where he had been running a successful printing business. He wanted to practice his new printing skills in his native country. He had perhaps learned printing technology in Cologne. The first book Caxton printed with a date was Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers, although it is not usually regarded as the first book he had printed in England.

The translation of Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers from French to English was by Anthony Woodville, 2nd Earl Rivers, who did the translation on a voyage to the shrine of Santiago de Compostella. In 1473 the knight Lewis de Bretaylle had lent him a French manuscript, Les ditz moraulx des philosophes by Jehan or Guillaume de Thionville, whose turn-of-the-fifteenth-century French translation of a Latin work has a lineage that derives from an Arabic text. The Arabic, Mukhtar al-hikam wa mahasin al-kalim ("Choice Maxims and Finest Sayings") was written toward the middle of the eleventh century by al-Mubashshir ibn Fatiq, an Egyptian emir.

When Woodville finished with his translation from French to English he handed the manuscript to Caxton for proofreading. Caxton revised the translation and added an epilogue. He pointed out that Woodville had omitted the remarks of Socrates concerning women. A chapter was then edited back in called "Touching Women".