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typographyIssue 1

Baskerville†

2 † Baskerville

3 † Baskerville

He designed and cut the types, improved the wooden press on which he printed the book and

made improvements to thepaper he used.

John Baskerville was born in the village of Wolverley, near Kidderminster, Worcestershire, 1706. The youngest son of parents of some standing in the local community.

Little is known of his early life before he came to Birmingham to make his living as a writing master in this increasingly thriving industrial city of many trades. He subsequently entered into the business of the commissioning and selling of japanned goods which he continued for most of the rest of his life. Japanning is essentially the decoration of metal objects with coats of varnish and, in the more expensive articles, with paintings.

John Baskerville 1706–1775

†

Baskerville

A contemporary portrait of John

Baskerville

4 † Baskerville

There is early evidence of Baskerville’s interest in typography. On the 6th floor of the Birmingham’s Central Library is mounted a unique slate which Baskerville engraved as an advertisement for his lettering designs for gravestones. He was fascinated by the shape of letter forms and this led him eventually to his design and manufacture of types for the printing press.

In 1754 he produced prospectuses for his first book, a proposed edition of Virgil, asking for subscribers, a common practice for printers of the period. He designed and cut the types, improved the wooden press on which he printed the book and made improvements to the paper he used. He published it in 1757 supported by a long list of subscribers of standing in the local community. The quality of the printing, the design of the letters and of the page stood out from the work of contemporary professional printers.

John Baskerville The Works of Joseph Addison

Title Page 1761

• Five Line Pica.

• French Cannon.

• Two Line Double Pica.

• Two Line Great Primer.

• Two Line English.

• Double Pica Roman with Double Pica Italic.

• Great Primer Roman with Great Primer Italic.

• English Roman with English Italic.

• Pica Roman with Pica Italic.

• Small Pica Roman with Small Pica Italic.

• Long Primer Roman with Long Primer Italic.

• Burgeois Roman with Burgeois Italic.

• Brevier Roman No. 1. with Brevier Italic No. 1.

• Brevier Roman No. 2. with Brevier Italic No. 2.

• Nonpareil Roman with Nonpareil Italic.

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The Baskerville fonts were:

5 † Baskerville

Between 1757 and 1775 he printed books in a wide range of subjects. He was particularly proud of his series of Latin and of English classics, notably Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. His more ephemeral books included the satirical Political Songster of John Freeth, 1771, and the Vocabulary or pocket dictionary, 1765. His Bible, 1763, is considered his masterpiece, and his editions of the Book of Common Prayer are fine examples of text clearly printed for the convenience of readers. He had to negotiate permission to print the Bible and Prayer Books from Cambridge University as its press owned the patents. It even stipulated that Baskerville, who was undeterred, should take his presses to Cambridge to print them.

Letters survive of his correspondence, notably with Matthew Boulton, who was a friend as well as a business associate for most of his life , Benjamin Franklin who met him on a visit from the USA and shared his love of printing and Robert Dodsley, a bookseller from London.

Baskerville’s original

Birmingham foundry

The Folio Bible printed

by Baskerville in 1763

6 † Baskerville

The original punches and types were eventually sold by Sarah Baskerville to Beaumarchais, the French dramatist. He took them to printers at Kehl, a few miles east of Strasbourg, for the printing of a text of Voltaire’s works. Other texts in English have been identified as printed in Baskerville type, although in his lifetime he found it impossible to sell his type and punches. These are now held by Cambridge University Library.

Baskerville was an indepen-dent thinker. Although at one time he signed minutes at St Philip’s Church, he stipulated in his will that he should be buried in unconsecrated ground on his own estate at Easy Hill. He was known as a kind and generous man, although passages in his will showed he could remember grudges. He took in Sarah Eaves as his housekeeper when her husband abandoned her, and he treated her children generously as his own. They were married as soon as her husband was reported dead.

Modified versions of Baskerville type have been

popular and admired to the present day, and are

a recognised font on 21st century word processors.

A monument to John Baskerville outside Baskerville House. Sculpture in Centenary Square, Birmingham, England

7 † Baskerville

Baskerville was always an innovator. Recent research has found that he entered examples of his designs for marbled paper into a competition at the Royal College of Arts. This has been identified in some copies of his books together with a gilt tooled binding designed by himself or his binder. An example is preserved in a copy of the 1758 edition of Milton in the Collection.

He died in 1775, an estab-lished, if eccentric, citizen of Birmingham, celebrated internationally for his type design and his printing of beautiful books.

When friends asked him how he wished to be buried, Baskerville is reputed to have answered that they could “bury him sitting, standing, or lying, but he did not think they could bury him flying.”Upon his death he was buried in a vault in a conical building on his own property of Easy Hill. He wrote his own epitaph, as follows:

Beneath this cone in unconscrated ground

a friend to the liberties of mankind directed his body to

be inhum’d. May the example contribute to emancipate thy

mind from the idle fears of superstition and the wicked

arts of priesthood.

Left to Right The Bible title page 1763 Title page The Book of Common Prayer The Book of Common Prayer 1762

Baskerville