Sammelband

[3] In the German language as used in science and humanities, Sammelband refers to an edited volume.

[4] Nearly forty of these tract volumes have been reconstructed from the evidence of now separately bound parts.

Perhaps most famous and extensive of his sammelbände work was the collection made out of Caxton's 1476-8 productions, known since the time of Caxton scholar William Blades as “the volume purchased by King George I from the estate of Bishop John Moore in 1714.”[5] This volume is a compendium of Caxton’s first run of vernacular poetry, and the texts within appear as follows: Modern students of early Tudor literature only rarely encounter extant Sammelbände, most of which were disbound in the nineteenth century.

[3] In Caxton’s case specifically, he presents a Lydgatenized[6] Chaucer, even to the point of giving the Parliament of Fowls a unique new title, The Temple of Brass, to follow Lydgate’s Temple of Glas.

These explanatory additions and the use of advertisements, such as Caxton’s “new and improved edition” of The Canterbury Tales shows the movement away from privileged, aristocratic readership towards the readership of the middle class, solidifying printing as a business and a social progression.