John Baskerville example essay topic

The Font, Baskerville was created by John Baskerville, a type founder and printer in late eighteenth-century England. It is classified as transitional. As a matter of fact, with its generous proportions, the Baskerville appears not very different from its predecessors. But the difference between fine and bold strokes is more marked, the lower-case serifs are almost horizontal and the emphasis on the stroke widths is almost vertical. According to Baskerville, "The whole duty of typography, is to communicate to the imagination". He and Caslon were the two great type designers of the 18th cent. in England.

He began his work as printer and publisher in 1757 and in 1758 became printer to Cambridge Univ. Baskerville's first volume was a quarto edition of Vergil. His type faces introduced the modern, pseudo classical style, with level serifs and with emphasis on the contrast of light and heavy lines. This style influenced that of the Dido t family in France and that of Bodoni in Italy.

Books printed by Baskerville are typically large, with wide margins, made with excellent paper and ink. His masterpiece was a folio Bible, published in 1763. After his death his wife operated the press until 1777. Then most of his types were purchased by Beaumarchais and were used in his 70-volume edition of Voltaire. The matrices, long lost, were rediscovered and in 1953 were presented to the Cambridge Univ. Press.

Among Baskerville's publications in the British Museum are Aesop's Fables (1761), the Bible (1763), and the works of Horace (1770). A towering figure in the history of English typography, he broke one tradition and started another. Before Baskerville, the standard English type of the early 18th century was Caslon - a tradition which stretched back to Ald us Manutius of the 15th century. John Baskerville improved existing types, ink and presses and produced a clearer blacker type than any of his contemporaries. Unfortunately, his type was severely criticised due to the thinness of the strokes. Critics maintained that his type "hurt the eye" and would be "responsible for blinding the nation".

It was a commercial failure and wasn't revived until the early 20th century. He has been called "the greatest printer England ever produced" but was very much disliked by his contemporaries. He was regarded as nouveau-riche, provincial, and had unpopular anti-establishment views on religion. He insisted on being buried standing up in a special building in his garden and was thence branded an atheist. In 1820, his body was dug up and used as a sort of local peepshow. The curious could view it for the sum of 6 pence.