A History of the Old English Letter Foundries with Notes, Historical and Bibliographical, on the Rise and Progress of English Typography.

This foundry was begun in Sheffield about the beginning of the present century. In 1810, Mr. Bower issued a price list below those of the London founders, whose founts he succee...

[514] “Chiswell Street, January 19, 1814. Henry Caslon respectfully informs his friends and the printers in general, that the term of his partnership with the executors of the l...

Greek type first occurs in the _Cicero de Officiis_, printed at Mentz in 1465, at the press of Fust and Schoeffer. The fount used is exceedingly rude and imperfect, many of the...

Printing was practised at Oxford within a year of the introduction of the art into England. Setting aside the legend of Corsellis and the “1468” _Exposicio Simboli_, we find tha...

Printing had reached a low ebb in England in the early years of the eighteenth century. A glance through any of the common public prints of the day, such, for instance, as offic...

JOHN BASKERVILLE was Born at Wolverley, in The county of Worcestershire, in the year 1706. He began life as a footman to a clergyman, and at the age of twenty became a writing-m...

It will be convenient, now that we have reached a point at which letter-founding enters upon a new stage as a distinct trade, to take a brief survey of its progress as a mechani...

Thomas James was the son of the Rev. John James, vicar of Basingstoke.[403] He served his apprenticeship to Robert Andrews, but quitted his service prior to the year 1710, in or...

In taking a brief survey of that early period of English Typography when printers are assumed to have been their own letter-founders, we shall attempt no more than to gather tog...

We have laid before the reader, in the Introductory Chapter, such facts and conjectures as it is possible to gather together respecting the processes and appliances adopted by t...

1668. The Master and Wardens requested to certify to the Archbishop of Canterbury that Thomas Goring, a member of this Company, is an honest and sufficient man, and fit to be on...

Mr. Joseph Fry, a prominent and enterprising Bristolian, was the son of Mr. John Fry, and was born in the year 1728. He entered the medical profession, where, says a biographer,...

Joseph Jackson, apprentice to Caslon I, was born in Old Street, London, on Sept. 4, 1733. He was the first child baptised in St. Luke’s, and received his education at a school i...

Our Statute Books and Public Records do not throw any very important light on the early history of English letter-founding. Although a busy import trade in type appears to have...

Prior to 1637, letter-founding is not specifically mentioned as a distinct industry in any of the Public Documents. We are not on that account however, (as we have endeavoured t...

Joseph Moxon, whose distinction it is to have been the first practical English writer on the mechanics of typography, was born at Wakefield, in Yorkshire, on August 8, 1627, and...

That artist was forthcoming in William Caslon in 1720, and from the time he cut his first fount of pica, the Roman letter in England entered on a career of honour. Caslon went b...

This excellent letter-founder was bound apprentice to Joseph Jackson in the year 1782, at the age of 16, and remained in his service till Jackson’s death in 1792. During the las...

In the early years of the 18th century, printing in Scotland was in a condition even more depressed and unsatisfactory than in England. Except in Glasgow and Edinburgh the art w...

Thomas Cottrell, described by Mores as _à primo proximus_ of modern letter-founders, served his apprenticeship in the foundry of the first Caslon. He was employed there as a dre...

Mores says he was a Dutchman who founded in this country, where he cut the fount of Pica Samaritan which appears in Caslon’s Specimen of 1734.[719] He subsequently returned to h...

William Martin was brother to Robert Martin,[679] Baskerville’s apprentice and successor. He appears to have acquired his first knowledge of the art at the Birmingham foundry, a...

William Miller, the originator of this now great foundry, was for some time a foreman in the Glasgow Letter Foundry. About the year 1809 he left that service to begin a foundry...