. The design shows the smooth, gleaming finish of his paper and minimal title pages. Baskerville's typeface was part of an ambitious project to create books of the greatest possible quality. Baskerville was a wealthy industrialist, who had started his career as a writing-master (teacher of calligraphy) and carver of gravestones, before making a fortune as a manufacturer of varnished lacquer goods. At a time when books in England were generally printed to a low standard, using typefaces of conservative design, Baskerville sought to offer books created to higher-quality methods of printing than any before, using carefully made, level presses, a high quality of ink and very smooth paper pressed after printing to a glazed, gleaming finish. While Baskerville's types in some aspects recall those of
William Caslon, the most eminent punchcutter of the time, his approach was far more radical.
Beatrice Warde,
John Dreyfus and others have written that aspects of his design recalled his handwriting and common elements of the calligraphy taught by the time of Baskerville's youth, which had been used in copperplate engraving but had not previously been cut into type in Britain. Such details included many of the intricate details of his
italic, such as the flourishes on the capital
N and entering stroke at top left of the italic 'p'. He had clearly considered the topic of ideal letterforms for many years, since a slate carved in his early career offering his services cutting tombstones, believed to date from around 1730, is partly cut in lettering very similar to his typefaces of the 1750s. The result was a typeface cut by Handy to Baskerville's specifications that reflected Baskerville's ideals of perfection. According to Baskerville, he developed his printing projects for seven years, releasing a
prospectus advertisement for the project in 1754, before finally releasing his first book, an edition of
Virgil, in 1757, which was followed by other classics. At the start of his edition of
Paradise Lost, he wrote a preface explaining his ambitions. It was there in 1763 that he published his master work, a folio
Bible.
Reception The crispness of Baskerville's work seems to have unsettled (or perhaps provoked jealousy in) his contemporaries, and some claimed the stark contrasts in his printing damaged the eyes. Baskerville was never particularly successful as a printer, being a printer of specialist and elite editions, something not helped by the erratic standard of editing in his books. Abroad, however, he was much admired (if not directly imitated, at least not his style of type design), notably by
Pierre Simon Fournier,
Giambattista Bodoni and
Benjamin Franklin (who had started his career as a printer), who wrote him a letter praising his work. His work was later admired in England by
Thomas Frognall Dibdin, who wrote that "in his Italic letter...he stands unrivalled; such elegance, freedom and perfect symmetry being in vain to be looked for among the specimens of
Aldus and
Colinaeus...Baskerville was a truly original artist, he struck out a new method of printing in this country and may be considered as the founder of that luxuriant style of typography which at present so generally prevails; and which seems to have attained perfection in the neatness of Whittingham, the elegance of Bulmer and the splendour of Bensley."
Thomas Curson Hansard in 1825 seems to have had misgivings about his work, praising his achievement in some ways but also suggesting that he was a better printer than a type designer.
Philip Gaskell particularly highlights as a successful typeface of this period the Wilson foundry of Glasgow's 'startling'
English-sized (14 pt) roman of 1760, following soon from Baskerville's first editions of 1757 and cut extremely large for its point size: "Baskerville's influence is obvious, but Wilson has outdone the master in the width, weight and even the size of the face. I think myself that with its large x-height, generous width and clean execution, this elegant fount carries out Baskerville's ideas better than did Baskerville himself." The
Scotch Roman genre which proved popular in Britain and America is something of an intermediate between Didone typefaces and Baskerville's influence. The succession of more extreme "Didone" typefaces quickly replacing Baskerville's style has led to Baskerville being called "transitional" on the road to the Didone style which dominated printing for a long period, although of course Baskerville would not have considered his design "transitional" but as a successful end in itself. The original Baskerville type (with some replaced letters) was revived in 1917 by
Bruce Rogers, for the Harvard University Press, and also released by
G. Peignot et Fils in Paris (France). A modified version of Baskerville is also prominently used in the
Canadian government's corporate identity program—namely, in the 'Canada'
wordmark. Another modified version of Baskerville is used by
Northeastern University (USA), and the
ABRSM. ==Characteristics==