Historia destructionis Troiae by Guido delle Colonne, 14th or 15th century

Guido delle Colonne was a late thirteenth-century Italian writer, poet and jurist. He wrote works in Latin and also the Italian vernacular, of which several poems survive. His text found in MS 194 is perhaps the most important and well-known of his works. Completed around 1287, it is a prose history on the destruction of the ancient city of Troy. Likely based on an earlier work on the same subject (perhaps the ancient work by Dares Phrygius, or a French work by Benôit de Sainte-Maure), Guido's work was widely translated and read throughout medieval Europe. In the late fifteenth century the first English printer, William Caxton printed his English translation of the French version of Guido's text, making it the first book to be printed in English.