Rare Book School

Preliminary Reading List

http://rarebookschool.org/2008/reading/history/h
75/

Introduction to the History of Typography

Stanley Nelson

Preliminary Advices
Five centuries of typographical history in five days! Students will get more out of this course if they do

some preliminary reading before coming to Charlottesville. Because there is such a vast literature on this

subject (some titles of which are hard to find), the trick is what to read and where to find it. I

recommend the following titles based upon content and availability, where possible within each section

to be read in the order given. Many of the out-of-print titles below are available for reasonable prices

via BookFinder. Don't feel you have to read everything, but do read what you can.

I. In preparation for the historical part of the course:

Steinberg, S. H. Five hundred years of printing. 1955; new edn rev John Trevitt. New Castle, DE: Oak

Knoll Press, 1996.

In print. Solid, comprehensive text, highly recommended.

Denman, Frank. The shaping of our alphabet: A study of changing type styles. New York: Alfred A.

Knopf, 1955.
Good general history focusing on the evolution of types. Easy to read. Shouldn't be too hard to find. Notice his
'take' on the various typographic styles.

Lawson, Alexander. Anatomy of a typeface. Boston: David R. Godine, 1990; pb rep 2002.
Brief histories of a multitude of successful typefaces. Be sure to look at Chapters 15-20 (the transition from old
style to modern faces) and Chapter 25 (20th-century newspaper faces).

Dowding, Geoffrey. The history of printing types: an illustrated summary of the main stages in the

development of type design from 1440 up to the present day. 1961; rep New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll

Press, 1998.
In print. Heavily illustrated: deals with Roman and italic, as well as decorated types. Worth a look.
Gray, Nicolete. Nineteenth century ornamented typefaces, with a chapter on ornamented types in

America by Ray Nash. Revised edition (1st edn1939, with a somewhat different title). Berkeley, CA:

University of California Press, 1976.

Almost unique study of the decorative types that came into general use in the c19. Very helpful for the modern
reader who tends to lump all of these ornate types into one category. Shouldn't be too hard to find. You don't
have to read all of it, but rather get a sense of the evolution and elaboration of types at this time.

Tracy, Walter. Letters of credit: a view of type design. Boston: David R. Godine, 1986; pb rep 2003.
In print. Full of insights, especially part I: Aspects of type design. The book is an in-depth look at what goes
into designing and making type. While published in 1986, it approaches the state of the art as it is today.

Carter, Harry. A View of early typography. The Lyell Lectures, 1968. Oxford: The Clarendon Press,

1969; rev edn London: Hyphen Press, 2002 (with an introduction by James Mosley).
In print. Harry Carter is one of my heroes. His work is first rate, and this series of lectures (recently reprinted)
is of enormous value. In particular look at Chapter 5: The history of typefounding and punchcutting.

De Vinne, Theodore Low. The practice of typography: . . . plain printing types. 2nd edn. New York:

The Century Co., 1902.

A jewel of a book, part of a series of four volumes written by De Vinne collectively titled "The Practice of
Typography" (1900-1904; many reprints), all of which are terrific (the others are Correct
composition, Modern method of composition, and A treatise on title-pages). Note Chapters 1, 2, and 3, which
deal with type making and type measurements, and sample the various chapters on type designs, especially
Chapter 12. Should be fairly easy to find.

Kelly, Rob Roy. American wood type 1828 - 1900. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1969.
With the invention of machine produced wood types in 1828 by Darius Wells, printers had the opportunity to
economically print large letters. This technology affected the look of the landscape as well as the shape of
letters. It's a technology that ought not be ignored.

Lewis, John. Anatomy of printing, the influence of art and history on its design. London: Faber and

Faber Ltd., 1970.

An art history approach to typography, in which the environment of printing is considered, and relationships
are drawn. Worth a look if you can find it.

McGrew, Mac. American metal typefaces of the 20th century. 2nd edn. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll

Press, 1996.
In print. McGrew made an enormous effort to get everything into this book and I think he nearly succeeded. If
you have a question about an American typeface, start here.

Updike, Daniel Berkeley. Printing types: their history, forms, and use. . ., 2 vols. 3rd edition.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1937 (pb rep Dover 1980).

Printing types is the classic study in English of the history and development of printing types. Some of the
information is dated, and, while the book isn't light reading, it is a fountain worth dipping into. Especially
useful for its focus in turn on the major European countries, giving chronological treatments of types as they
evolved in each region. Not for the faint of heart.

II. In preparation for the laboratory portion of the course:

We will not be happy unless we get our hands dirty, for there is much to be learned in the doing. Our

afternoons will be occupied in setting type, assembling and locking up a form, preparing a common

press for working, knocking up ink balls, making ready, and printing. As a timesaver, students need to
acquire some basic knowledge before we begin. The good news is that this task is easily accomplished

using the sources listed below.

Typesetting: You need to arrive knowing the 'lay of the case.' While arrangements can vary, we will

follow the lay of the basic California job case. You must also understand the system of spaces (em, ens,

3-to-em spaces, 4-to-em spaces, &c.) used to fill out each line of type to justify it to a particular length.

Any printing textbook of the 1960s or earlier will cover this subject. Use whichever text is most

convenient.

Lieberman, J. Ben. Printing as a hobby. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc. 1963. Pgs. 16-19, 32-34.
Basic, limited, but easily found. Shows case layouts and gives rudimentary instruction.

MacKellar, Thomas. The American printer. Philadelphia: MacKellar Smiths & Jordan. 18 editions, 1866-

93. 15th edn rep Nevada City, CA: Harold A. Berliner, 1977.
Wonderful source of information on trade practice and equipment of the third quarter of the 19th century.
Using any edition between the 11th and the 18th, see distributing and composing, pgs. 128-138.

Smith, John. The printer's grammar. London 1755; rep London: Gregg Press, Ltd, 1965 (English

Bibliographical Sources series).

An earlier look at typesetting and typographical style. Note pages 199-215 with extensive instructions
regarding the rules of typesetting. Out of print for some time but ought to be available.

Polk, Ralph W. The practice of printing. 1926; rev 1937, 1945, 1952, &c. Peoria, IL: The Manual Arts

Press (later edns: ibid., Charles A. Bennett & Co.).

Common textbook in many editions, with clear explanation of typesetting. Avoid using the 1971 edition
(called The practice of printing: letterpress and offset), which was updated to de-emphasize handset type.
Read chapters on printer=s type, type cases, spacing material, and the process of setting type.

International Typographical Union (ITU). Bureau of Education. I.T.U. lessons in printing. First three

volumes (of 9 published; volume 9 never seems to have appeared). Volume I: Elements of composition.

Volume II: Display composition. Volume III (Job): Job composition. Indianapolis, IN: ITU, various

dates 1945-56.
Sorting out volumes in the two separate subsets (News and Job) of this 9-volume set of volumes, many of
them several times revised, can be tricky. Volumes I and II are the same for the two subsets, but there are two
different Volume IIIs: be sure to look at volume III: Job composition, rather than Volume III: Newspaper
practice. Superb resource covering every aspect of typesetting.

Henry, Frank S. Printing:A textbook for printers' apprentices. 1917. Revised edn as The essentials of

printing: a text-book for beginners. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1924.
Excellent, in-depth text.

Other possibilities include various textbooks by R. Randolph Karch: Printing and the allied

trades (1931, rev edns 1939, 1954, 1958, 1962), or the first edition (but not later ones) of his Graphic

arts procedures (1948; sev times reprinted)

Printing on the common press:

Moxon, Joseph. Mechanick exercises on the whole art of printing, ed. Herbert Davis and Harry Carter.

Rev edn. London: Oxford University Press, 1962 (pb rep Dover Books).
The original text, published in parts 1683/84, represents the earliest and best description of printing on the
common press. See pages 45-81 and 252-311 of the Davis & Carter edition. Moxon isn't easy reading, but it's
primary material and hard to beat. If what he writes isn't clear to you, we'll cover all of this in class anyway.

III. Reference Shelf

Berry, W. Turner and H. Edmund Poole. Annals of printing, A chronological encyclopaedia from the

earliest times to 1950. London: Blandford Press, 1966.

Browsing through this book is an eye opener. It helps to make connections between the varying threads of
printing history. Look for it.

Jaspert, W. Pincus, with W. Turner Berry & A. F. Johnson. The encyclopaedia of type faces. 1953; 5th

edn. London: Seven Dials (Sterling Publishing), 2001.

In print. A basic reference that includes European faces. The prefatory material is worth a look, especially the
typeface classification.

Type, Lettering, and Calligraphy, 1450-1830

James Mosley

Preliminary Advices
Some notes on the course, and a preliminary reading list

The object of the course is to trace the broad development of letterforms from the period of the

invention of printing to that of the beginning of its mechanization in the early 19th century, the so-

called 'hand press period'. I shall relate letterforms in different media -- writing, printing, and

sometimes in sculpture and architecture too -- and to note the cultural, technical and economic

factors that influenced their development. Although it is not intended as a formal course in type

identification, the course should help to develop an awareness of style in type and lettering and to

provide knowledge of the consensus of current scholarship, and thus establish a basis for the

informed judgment without which the identifying of types should not be attempted.
Preliminary reading

This will depend on what you have already done. If you have only a generalized familiarity with

type and writing, then it will be worth looking at least one of the works which give the larger

picture (Anderson 1969, Meggs 1998), and at one of the more readable histories of type

(perhaps Updike 1937 and Dowding 1961) and of writing (Ullman 1932, Fairbank 1949). Some

of the volumes of collected essays in type history are good for browsing (Johnson 1970, Morison

1981, Dreyfus 1994) and should be fairly widely available, at least in academic libraries.

Read Carter 1969 (until the 2002 reprint, not easy to find: a part of the original small edition was
destroyed). Indeed, since his writing combines authority, lucidity, brevity and wit to a degree that

is quite unique in its field, read anything that you can find bearing the name of Harry Carter

(1901-81), as author, editor or translator.

Anderson, Donald M. The art of written forms. New York, 1969. Pb rep 1992 as Calligraphy: the

art of written forms .

Carter, Harry A view of early typography up to about 1600. Originally published Oxford, 1969. Pb

rep 2002, with a new introduction by James Mosley.

Dowding, Geoffrey An introduction to the history of printing types. London, 1961.

Dreyfus, John Into print: selected writing on printing history, typography and book

production. London, 1994.

Fairbank, Alfred A book of scripts. Harmondsworth, 1949.

Johnson, A. F. Selected essays on books and printing. Amsterdam, 1970.

Meggs, Philip B. A history of graphic design. 3rd ed. New York, 1998.

Morison, Stanley Selected essays on the history of letter-forms in manuscript and print, edited by

David McKitterick. Cambridge, 1981.

Ullman, B. L. Ancient writing and its influence. New York, 1932 (reprinted, with an introduction

by Julian Brown, Cambridge, Mass., 1969).

Updike, D. B. Printing types: their history, forms and use. 2nd ed. Cambridge, Mass., 1937.

Type, Lettering, and Calligraphy, 1830-2000

James Mosley

Preliminary Advices
Some notes on the course, and a preliminary reading list
This course begins at the date when printing and its related crafts became industrial processes, and the

visual effect of the change can most clearly be seen in the typography of advertising and promotional

printing. New techniques like lithography were able to exploit large and hand-drawn letterforms freely,

and to make use of colour. This development had its effect on the appearance of the types that were

made for commercial work.

But in some ways type resisted the technical changes that took place in other areas of printing. Although

the casting of type was eventually mechanized, the punches continued to be cut by hand until the end of

the 19th century and many books were still hand set until well into the 20th. However by 1900 it became

possible to translate a designer’s own drawings more or less directly into type by using Benton’s new

pantographic punch- or matrix-cutting machine, the device that had made possible the launching of

complete composition systems like the Linotype and Monotype. In the face of this competition, the

marketing of named type series in a wide range of sizes became necessary to the survival of the

traditional typefoundries. Consequently type history in the 20th century is often linked to the names of

star designers, such as Goudy and Gill, Van Krimpen and Koch, after World War 1 and Zapf and Frutiger

in the period following World War 2. The course will look at the work of many well-known type

designers, but it will also attempt to do justice to names like Morris Fuller Benton at the American

Typefounders Company, C. H. Griffith at Mergenthaler Linotype, and Frank Hinman Pierpont (a

Connecticut Yankee), with his German colleague Fritz Max Steltzer as the head of the type-drawing

office, at the English Monotype company. These are the ‘type directors’ who deserve a substantial share

of the credit for the quality of many of the enduring types of the first half of the 20th century.

The aggressive commercial typography of the 19th century provided some new type models that are still

in use, like sanserif and slab-serif. But a taste for ‘old style’ typography set in quite early as a reaction,

producing many examples of the ‘revival’ of historical models from the 15th to the 18th centuries. It is

seen at work in the products of the so-called ‘private press movement’. And some of the most widely

used typefaces of the hot-metal typesetting systems like Linotype and Monotype were reproductions of

historical models, many of which survive among the digital typefaces that are currently used.

The Second World War effectively halted the making of new types for a time, and by 1945 the demise of

metal type and its replacement by the photographic process known as ‘photocomposition’ or ‘filmsetting’

–a development that had long been predicted in printing trade journals –seemed inevitable, and the

prospect haunted the traditional makers of type, many of whom developed their own systems. All the

same, there were some major achievements to come in metal types during the second half of the 20th

century, such as the brilliant series of types showing the inventive genius of Roger Excoffon, designer at

the small Olive typefoundry in Marseille, the titanic programme of punchcutting by Monotype in Britain

that was required to make the multiple widths and weights of the typeface Univers from designs by

Adrian Frutiger (a design originally conceived for the filmsetting system known as the Lumitype or

Photon). And the enduring work of Hermann Zapf (born 1918), whose first type, a Fraktur, had

appeared in 1939, and whose Palatino was not only a bestseller among the metal types of the 1950s but

became a basic font for the pioneering Apple Macintosh computer and its printers.

Filmsetting was succeeded by digital type. At first this was output from expensive stand-alone systems,

but the introduction in 1984–1985 of the Apple Macintosh computer, the LaserWriter, the PostScript
page description language, the page makeup software PostScript, and Fontographer, a program for

making digital type, changed the typographical landscape rapidly and permanently, opening access to

typesetting and the design of typefaces to any owner of a computer. Some of the prominent type

designers of this last period, from 1990 to 2000, which include names like those of Matthew Carter,

Gerard Unger, Sumner Stone and Jonathan Hoefler, have made many of their more recent typefaces as

commissions for individual clients, such as magazines and newspapers. These have in due course been

more generally marketed, and are currently used widely in printed media.

Preliminary reading
Here are some titles that are worth looking at as an introduction to type and letterforms of our period.

The most useful are marked with an asterisk. Bear in mind that in the United States works cited here

with a British imprint will often bear that of the US distributor or co-publisher.

Making type

*T. L. De Vinne, Plain printing types. New York, 1900 (and slightly-revised editions of 1902,

1925). One of the best books ever made about the traditionally-made type, written by an author who

know his subject thoroughly, and full of good and reliable historical notes. It has never been reprinted in

facsimile, but copies are still pretty easy to find secondhand and in libraries. (Plain printing types is the

title generally cited, but in searching for it bear in mind that it is one of four volumes issued under the

overall title The practice of typography. The subtitle of this one is A treatise on the processes of type-

making, the point system, the names, sizes, styles and prices of plain printing types.)

L. A. Legros and J. C. Grant, Typographical printing surfaces. London, 1916. More often cited

than read, this work is full of accounts of composing machines of the early 20th century and of the

making of type generally at its date. It is certainly worth looking at, but the detail tends to swamp the

reader, and its authors were too close to their subject to provide a good overview.

*Walter Tracy, Letters of credit: a view of type design. London, 1986. A readable work that

drawing on the author’s experience with the British Linotype company, but provides more of the

practical details involved in making type than any previously-published work. His case-studies of the

types of W. A. Dwiggins and Jan Van Krimpen are highly illuminating.

*Richard Southall, Printer’s type in the twentieth century: manufacturing and design

methods. New Castle: Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2005. The most detailed historical

study of the technology of type making, from the Linotype and Monotype, via filmsetting, to the

development of digital type, with much material drawn from the author’s own experience.

W. A. Dwiggins, WAD to RR.: a letter about designing type. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard

College Library, Department of Printing and Graphic Arts, 1940. A brief (8-page), revealing note
adapted by Dwiggins from a letter to his friend the illustrator and type designer Rudolf Ruzicka about

his own methods and his working relationship with ‘G’ or ‘Griff’ - the Linotype type director C. H.

Griffith.

Alan Marshall, Du plomb à la lumière: la Lumitype-Photon et la naissance des industries

graphiques modernes. Paris, 2003. A detailed account of the most innovative of the filmsetting

systems that also gives an overview of the competing technologies.

*David Earls, Designing typefaces. Mies: RotoVision, 2002. A practical handbook for

designers of digital type, with studies of leading contemporary designers.

Karen Cheng, Designing type. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. A widely praised

and comprehensive handbook for present-day type makers.

General type history

*Michael Twyman, Printing 1770–1970. London, 1970 (revised reprint 1998). Twyman’s

wide-ranging work sets type history against the changing processes and purposes of printing.

*Robert Bringhurst, The elements of typographic style.Vancouver, 1992. (2nd ed.

1996). Gives a good idea of the historical elements that lie behind many classical revivals that began life

during the era of metal type and which have survived the transition.

*Alexander Lawson, Anatomy of a typeface. Boston: Godine, 1990. The fruit of experience

and wide reading, but be wary of taking all its information too literally. Notwithstanding the title, it does

discuss several different types and their makers.

The 19th century

There are really only two essential works, both of them classics.

*Nicolete Gray, Nineteenth century ornamented typefaces. (London, 1976) was first published in

1938. Its second edition, though only slightly revised, has far better illustrations. It is easy to point out

its shortcomings: it hardly discusses how such types were made, and those it describes are mostly what

the author could find in specimens located in London (at the St Bride Library). Contemporary types in

France, Germany and the US are mostly ignored. (The US distributor demanded an additional chapter,

by Ray Nash, on American types of the period.) But, however narrow its focus, Gray’s work also has the

virtues of a pioneering history by an unusually perceptive writer.

*Rob Roy Kelly, American wood type 1828-1900. New York, 1969, tells the story of the vigorous

designs of the big types used for printing posters and similar work, in the context of the mechanical

inventions that made them possible. Kelly, who died in 2004, was an enthusiast for what might be styled

‘the types that won the West’, and his book is well-informed and hugely enjoyable.

The 20th century

*Sebastian Carter, Twentieth-century type designers. 2nd ed. London, 1995. This is a very

comprehensive and readable account of the lettering artists whose work is seen in the metal typography

of the century, and which also deals well with several of the later designers whose work provides the

typographical landscape of the present day.

Lewis Blackwell, Twentieth-century type. London, 1992, a more sumptuous work, with excellent

colour illustrations. It was reissued in 1998 in a different format under the title Twentieth-century type:

remix.

Mac McGrew, American metal typefaces of the twentieth century. Second revised

edition. New Castle, Delaware, 1993. This is frankly an illustrated catalogue, comprehensive, and

strong on facts and dates, that was wisely circulated in a provisional form before publication, which

eliminated many myths and errors (but beware of those that remain).

Max Caflisch, Schriftanalysen: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte typographischer

Schriften. St Gallen: Typotron, 2003. Essays that Caflisch contributed over many years to the

Swiss journal Typografische Monatsblätter. They include many detailed case studies, excellently

illustrated, of the design of some major typefaces, including some revivals of classic historic models.

The modern movement

The modernist designers of the 1920s, including El Lissitzky, Moholy Nagy, Herbert Bayer, were acutely

interested in typography and their work made its mark more generally, especially in the world of

publicity and advertising.

*Jan Tschichold, The new typography: a handbook for modern designers, translated by

Ruari McLean, with an introduction by Robin Kinross. Berkeley, 1995. Jan Tschichold was

one of the most articulate and dogmatic of the exponents of the principles of modernism. The original

edition of Die neue Typographie, his little handbook of 1928, one of the first textbooks published for

typographical designers, has now become an iconic, and very rare and expensive artefact. A facsimile

edition of it was published in Berlin in 1987. McLean’s English translation is good, and Kinross’s

excellent introduction places the work in context.

*Herbert Spencer, Pioneers of modern typography. London, 1969. Revised edition,

1982. A good overview of the movement generally, and of the work of some major modern designers in

several different European countries.

The following detailed works add an updated supplement to Spencer’s book:

Richard Hollis, Swiss graphic design: the origins and growth of an international style,

1920–1965. London: Laurence King, 2006.

Christopher Burke, Active literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography. London:

Hyphen Press, 2007.

Some individuals

*Stanley Morison, A tally of types cut for machine composition and introduced at the

University Press, Cambridge 1922-1932. Cambridge, privately printed, 1953. Morison, an adviser

to the British Monotype Corporation, The Times newspaper, and the University Press at Cambridge, was

persuaded to write this typographical apologia pro vita sua for limited circulation. After his death this

work was reissued twice, once in 1973 with the addition of essays by other hands on some types with

which Morison had been concerned, and again by Godine in Boston in 1999. This latter edition is worth

seeking out for its new introduction by Mike Parker, who was type director of Mergenthaler Linotype in

Brooklyn during the transition from metal to film and to digital formats. While generous to Morison,

Parker even-handedly pays tribute to figures whose role with Monotype was under-appreciated.

*Nicolas Barker, Stanley Morison. Cambridge, 1972. Morison’s very full ‘authorized’ biography,

written with much personal affection, but admirably clear-sighted about its subject. It provides a wealth

of detailed typographical information relating to his period.

Christopher Burke, Paul Renner: the art of typography. London: Hyphen Press, 1998.

For all their virtues, to my mind none of the biographies of Eric Gill does full justice to his lettering or

his type designs. His little Essay on typography, High Wycombe, 1930 (reprinted 1988, with

an introduction by Christopher Skelton), set out his own philosophy on these matters. The

Typophiles of New York coaxed the following brief typographical autobiographies from their authors.

Jan Van Krimpen, On designing and devising type, 1957.

Hermann Zapf, About alphabets, 1970.

Calligraphy and lettering

*Nicolete Gray, Lettering on buildings, London, 1960. A brilliant and polemical essay, which

critically examined received ideas about lettering. Gray’s other writing about letterforms is also worth

looking at, including the more complex History of lettering, 1987.

*Edward Johnston, Writing and illuminating and lettering, London, 1906 (still in print). The

classic textbook, which promoted the revival of the use of the broad pen and which coloured the ideas

regarding the essential qualities of lettering of a whole generation.

Claude Mediavilla, Calligraphy. Wommelgen, 1996. A historical work which also includes the

work of major 20th-century calligraphers.

Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon, Signs: lettering in the environment. London: Laurence

King, 2003. A useful and wide-ranging overview of public lettering.

Printed Ephemera
Preliminary Advices
Very few general works have been written about printed ephemera. There are books that cover the

history of advertising and therefore deal with the subject tangentially (9, 13-15), and others that

approach it through the history of printing and graphic design (4, 16). But most books and papers on

printed ephemera are concerned with specific categories of work, many of which have to do with

collecting.

Item 11 will be our set book for the course, and several copies will be available for us in class. This is not

a book to be read from cover to cover, but it would be appreciated if you could become familiar with it to

the extent of reading a few entries that interest you and browsing through most of it. If you have easy

access to a copy, please bring it along with you to class.

General works on various aspects of ephemera

1. Grand-Carteret. Vieux papiers, vieilles images: cartons d'un collectionneur (Paris: Flammarion,

2001)

2. James, Louis. Print and the people 1819-1951 (London: Allen Lane, 1976; pb rep London 1978)

3. The John Johnson Collection: catalogue of an exhibition (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1971)

4. Lewis, John. Printed ephemera: the changing uses of type and letterforms in English and American

printing (Ipswich: W. S. Cowell, 1962)

5. McCulloch, Lou W. Paper Americana (New York and London: A. S. Barnes, 1980)

6. Makepeace, Chris E. Ephemera: a book on its collection, conservation and use (Aldershot: Gower

Publishing, 1985)

7. Mayor, A. Hyatt. Popular prints of the Americas (New York: Crown Publishers, 1973)

8. Pieske, Christa. Bilder für jedermann: Wandbilddrucke 1840-1940 (Berlin: Museum für Deutsche

Volkskunde, Band 15, 1988)

9. Presbrey, Frank. The history and development of advertising (Garden City, New York: Doubleday

Doran, 1929)

10. Rickards, Maurice. Collecting printed ephemera (Oxford: Phaidon/Christie's, 1988)

11. Rickards, Maurice, The encyclopedia of ephemera: a guide to the fragmentary documents of

everyday life for the collector, curator, and historian, completed and edited by Michael Twyman with

the assistance of Sarah du Boscq de Beaumont and Amoret Tanner (London: The British Library; New

York: Routledge, 2000).

12. Roylance, Dale. Graphic Americana: the art and technique of printed ephemera (Princeton:

Princeton University Library, 1992)

13. Sampson, Henry. A history of advertising from the earliest times (London: Chatto & Windus, 1874)

14. Smith, William. Advertise. How? When? Where? (London: Routledge, Warne, & Routledge, 1863)

15. Turner, E. S. The shocking history of advertising! (London: Michael Joseph, 1952; rev. pb edn

Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1965)

16. Twyman, Michael. Printing 1770-1970; an illustrated history of its development and uses in

England (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1970; rep London: The British Library; New Castle DE: Oak

Knoll Press, 1998)

Printing, graphic design, and letterforms

Some understanding of printing methods (18, 20, 26) and the growth of the printing trade (16, 23-25,

27) will be needed to follow the course, and an acquaintance with graphic design and letterforms would

be helpful (4, 19, 21, 22)

17. Anderson, Patricia. The printed image and the transformation of popular culture 1790-

1860 (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1991)

18. Gascoigne, Bamber. How to identify prints (London: Thames & Hudson, 1986; rep 1995)

19. Gray, Nicolete. Nineteenth century ornamented typefaces, with a chapter on ornamented types in

America by Ray Nash (London: Faber & Faber, 1976)

20. Griffiths, Antony. Prints and printmaking: an introduction to the history and techniques, 2nd edn

(London: British Museum Press, 1996)

21. Harris, Elizabeth. The fat and the lean: American wood type in the 19th cent. (Washington, DC:

Smithsonian Institution, 1983)

22. Kelly, Rob Roy. American wood type 1828-1900 (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969)

23. Marzio, Peter. The Democratic art. Pictures for a 19th-century America (Boston: David R Godine,

1979; London: Scolar Press, 1980)

24. Silver, Rollo G. The American printer, 1787-1825 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for

the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1967)

25. Thomas, Isaiah. The history of printing in America, ed. Marcus A. McCorison from the 2nd edn

[1874] (New York: Weathervane Books, 1970)

26. Twyman, Michael. The British Library guide to printing: history and techniques (London: The

British Library; Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1998)

27. Wroth, Lawrence C. The colonial printer, 2nd edn (Portland, ME: Southworth-Anthoensen Press,

1938)

Categories of ephemera

There must be hundred of books on the market that cover specific categories of ephemera. Most of them

are directed at collectors and put emphasis on listings and prices rather than on the cultural, social, or

graphic significance of the category in question. References for many of these books can be found at the

end of entries in 11. It would be worth following up one or two of those you think might interest you,

simply to find out something about this type of publication. A few of the more consequential specialist

books that are concerned with issues beyond those of the market place are listed below:

28. Allen, Alastair, & Hoverstadt, Joan. The history of printed scraps (London: New Cavendish Books,

1983; pb rep Pincushion Press, 1990)

29. Buday, George C. The history of the Christmas card (London: Rockliff, 1954; rep 1964, 1992)

30. Crestin-Billet. La folie des étiquettes de vins (Paris: Flammarion, 2001)

31. Davis, Alec. Package and print ((London: Faber & Faber, 1967)

32. Fenn, Patricia, & Malpa, Alfred P. Rewards of merit (Charlottesville, VA: Ephemera Society of

America, 1994)

33. Heal, Ambrose. London Tradesmen's cards of the XVIII century (London: Batsford, 1925; pb rep

New York: Dover Books, 1968)

34. Hannas, Linda. The English jigsaw puzzle, 1760-1890 (London: Wayland, 1972)

35. Hyde, Ralph, Panoramania! (London: Trefoil Publications in association with the Barbican Art

Gallery, 1988)

36. Jay, Robert. The trade card in nineteenth-century America (Columbia: University of Missouri Press,

1987)

37. Kunzle, David. The early comic strip and The history of the comic strip: the c19, 2 vol. (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1973-90).

38. Levy, Lester S. Picture the songs: lithographs from the sheet music of nineteenth-century

America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976)

39. Marshall, Alan, & Gouttenègre, Thierry (eds). L'Affiche en Révolution (Vizelle, Musée de la

Révolution française, 1998)

40. Martin, Denis, & Huin, Bernard. Images d'Épinal (Québec and Paris: Musée du Québec and

Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1995)

41. Musée d'Orsay. L'Affiche de librarie au XIXe siècle (Paris: Éditions de La Ré union des Musées

Nationaux, 1987)

42. A nation of shopkeepers: trade ephemera from 1654 to the 1860s in the John Johnson

Collection (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2001)

43. Pearsall, Ronald. Victorian sheet music covers (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1972; Detroit: Gale

Research Co., 1972)

44. Rickards, Maurice. The public notice: an illustrated history (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973)

45. Seddon, Laura. A gallery of greetings (Manchester: Manchester Polytechnic Library, 1992)

46. Shelley, Donald A. The Fraktur-writings or illuminated manuscripts of the Pennsylvania

Germans (Allentown: The Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1961)

47. Staff, Frank. The picture postcard and its origins, 2nd edn (London: Lutterworth, 1979)

Producers of ephemera

Some printers and companies whose work has survived in quantity will be discussed during the course

(49, 51, 58). It also might be helpful for you to have details of a few publications about other individual

printers who produced ephemera (48, 53, 56, 57) and of some collective studies of printers who worked

in the field (54, 55).

48. John Cheney and his descendants, printers in Banbury since 1767 (Banbury: privately published,

1936)

49. Corley, T. A. B. Quaker enterprise in biscuits: Huntley and Palmers of Reading, 1822-

1972 (London: Hutchinson, 1972)

50. Ephemera: les imprimées de tous les jours, 1880-1939 (Lyon: Musée de l'imprimerie de Lyon,

2001)

51. Grace, D. R., and D. C. Phillips. Ransomes of Ipswich: a history of the firm and guide to its

records (Reading: Institute of Agricultural History, 1975)

52. Isaac, Peter C. G. Davison of Alnwick: pharmacist and printer 1781-1858 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1968)

53. McClinton, Katherine Morrison. The Chromolithographs of Louis Prang (New York: Clarkson N.

Potter, 1973)

54. Peters, Harry T. America on stone (New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1931)

55. Pierce, Sally, and Catharina Slautterback. Boston lithography 1825-1880 (Boston: The Boston

Athenaeum, 1991)
56. Wood, Robert. Victorian delights (London: Evans Brothers, 1967) [an account of the printed work of

J. Proctor in Hartlepool in the middle of the 19th century]

57. Tatham, David. John Henry Bufford American lithographer (Worcester: American Antiquarian

Society, 1976, rep from the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 86, part 1, April 1976)

58. Twyman, Michael. John Soulby, printer, Ulverston: a study of the work printed by John Soulby,

father and son, between 1796 and 1827, with an account of Ulverston at the time by William Rollinson

(Reading: Museum of English Rural Life, 1966)

Getting started

If you are unusually pressed for time or relatively new to the subject, I suggest the following reading and

browsing, more or less in the following sequence.

Leaf through 10 and 11 to get a feel for the range of ephemera we are likely to be covering (reading parts

of 10 will give you an outline of the history of collecting and studying ephemera; 11 will give you the

opportunity to read a few short accounts of various kinds of ephemera).

Thereafter, much will depend on your experience, knowledge levels, and interests. If you feel weak on

printing history I'm bound to recommend 16 for the British nineteenth-century scene and 26 for a more

general overview; for American chromolithography 23 is a must. If graphic design and letterforms are

special interests, try 4 and 19. The most readable introduction to advertising is 15, though if you can

locate a copy I would go to 14, the earliest book on the subject. Curatorial matters are discussed in 6.

Thereafter -- or even before -- please follow your instincts. No one can be an authority in this

extraordinarily broad field. The idea is that we should share what knowledge we have.