Caxton me fieri fecit

“Caxton me fieri fecit” is the printer’s Latin colophon in William Caxton’s 1485 edition of Le Morte Darthur: “Caxton caused me to be made.” The brief formula gives the printed book a first-person voice, while naming Caxton as the agent responsible for its production. It stands at the close of a publication account that distinguishes Sir Thomas Malory’s work of reducing the stories into English from Caxton’s division, printing, and completion of the volume.

Wording and Function

The phrase appears as the final words of the colophon. Its compact declaration presents the book as an object made through a named printer’s work; it is not an attribution of the underlying Arthurian narrative to Caxton. The surrounding colophon says that Malory reduced the material into English and that Caxton divided it into twenty-one books and chapters and printed it at Westminster, completing the edition on the last day of July 1485.

The wording’s first-person form makes the book seem to speak of its own making. In that voice, Caxton’s name is not merely an incidental mark: it records the person responsible for bringing this edition into print. Its placement at the end also gives the phrase the force of a final production credit, following the account of the book’s subject, organization, and printing.

Caxton and the Printed Book

The colophon’s credit reflects Caxton’s broader work as a printer and publisher. After years in the English trading community at Bruges, he returned to England about 1476 and introduced the printing press there. He was also a translator and editor, and the account describes him as printing books in continued succession during the remaining fifteen years of his life.

That wider publishing role helps clarify the phrase’s significance. “Caxton me fieri fecit” names the maker of this edition, while the colophon separately credits Malory for the English work. The two attributions preserve distinct forms of labor: the literary compilation and translation associated with Malory, and the book’s organization and printed production associated with Caxton.

Publication and Afterlife

Caxton’s edition was printed at Westminster in 1485. Only two copies of that first edition were known to the account: the Osterley copy, described as perfect, and the Althorp copy, which lacked eleven leaves later supplied in facsimile. The colophon, including its closing Latin phrase, thus belongs to the edition that later editors treated as the original point of reference.

Later printings retained and revised the publication account. Wynkyn de Worde’s 1498 colophon explicitly recalled that the book had first been printed by William Caxton, while the account of the 1557 reprint records its new title and London printer. The changing editions show why Caxton’s short formula matters: it remains a concise statement of responsibility within a textual history marked by reprinting, alteration, and editorial choices.

Significance

The phrase joins personal credit to the material transmission of literature. It does not claim that Caxton composed the stories; rather, it records his part in making Malory’s work available as a printed book. In a work whose closing matter names its author, its structure, its place and date of printing, and finally its printer, the formula serves as a small but durable signature of publication.