Literature in the other languages of Britain The most important work of literature surviving from the Middle Cornish period is "An Ordinale Kernewek" ("The Cornish Ordinalia"), a 9000-line religious drama composed around the year 1400. Three plays in Cornish known as the Ordinalia have survived from this period. The spread of printing affected the transmission of literature across Britain and Ireland. The first book printed in English, William Caxton's own translation of "Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye", was printed abroad in 1473, to be followed by the establishment of the first printing press in England in 1474. The establishment of a printing press in Scotland under
Early phase of printing in Calcutta the same time, a great amount of prose in the vernacular languages began to appear. Around 1806–07, a Hindu called Babu Ram established a printing machine for the first time, in Devanagari type, at Kidderpore, Calcutta, for publishing Sanskrit books. Thomas Roebuck in "The Annals of the College of Fort William" talks about the Lord Minto's lecture at Fort William College on 27 February 1808: "A printing press has been established by learned Hindoos, furnished with complete founts of improved Nagree types of different sizes, for the printing of books in the Sunskrit language. This press has been encouraged by