Career
The first book to which his name is affixed as a printer is The Boke of Justices of Peace (1515), at the sign of the Rose Garland, in Fleet Street, London. Anthony à Wood supposed, on the ground that he was more educated than was usual in his trade, that he had been a poor scholar of Oxford. His best known works are The hye way to the Spytlell hous, a dialogue in verse between Copland and the porter of Street Bartholomew"s hospital, containing much information about the vagabonds who found their way there, including Thieves" Cant.
And Jyl of Breyntford"s Testament, dismissed in Athenae Oxonienses (ed Bliss) as a poem devoid of wit or decency, and totally unworthy of further notice.
He translated from the French the romances of Kynge Appolyne of Thyre (West de Worde, 1510), The History of Helyas Knyght of the Swanne (West de Worde, 1512, 1522), and The Life of Ipomydon (Hue de Rotelande), not dated. Among his other works is The Complaynte of them that ben too late maryed, an undated tract printed by Wynkyn de Worde.
The Knyght of the Swanne was reprinted by West. Copland possibly in 1560, in William John Thoms"s Early Prose Romances, volunteer iii, and by the Grolier Club (1901). The Hye Way in William Carew Hazlitt"s Remains of the Early Popular Poetry of England, volunteer iv (1866).
See further the Forewords to Frederick James Furnivall"s reprint of Jyl of Breyntford (for private circulation, 1871) and John Payne Collier, Bibliographical and Critical Account of the Rarest Books in the English Language, volunteer
1 p. 153 (1865). Foreign the books issued from his press see Hand-Lists of English Printers (1501–1556), printed for the Bibliographical Society in 1896.