View of Early Typography: Up to 1600

Book Description
A View of Early Typography has long been regarded as the classic text on the production and use of type in the first 150 years of printing. By focusing on type, Harry Carter goes to the heart of design, the point at which the material processes of printing meet the intellectual concerns of publishers and the nature of the texts they publish. Among the topics covered: the diversity of letterforms (blackletter, roman, italic, and more); the tensions between Latin and the vernacular languages; and the establishment of standards of norms in type design. This is a facsimile of the original edition, of 1969, augmented by a new introduction in which James Mosley explains the significance of the book and gives a short account of Carter's life and work.


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"A view of early typography is a summary of what can be known about the production and use of type in the first 150 years of printing. By focusing on type, Carter goes to the heart of the matter: this is the point at which the material processes of printing meet the intellectual concerns of the publishers and the nature of the texts that they published. Among the topics covered: the technicalities of the production of type; the diversity of letterforms (blackletter, roman, italic, and more); the tensions between Latin and the vernacular languages; the establishment of standards and norms in type design. Carter ranges widely and deftly over the field of European printing in the period 1450-1600, drawing principally on his own long experience of the materials surviving from that time in libraries and archives. The argument is illustrated by a large gathering of pictures." This is a reprint of the edition published in 1969, long out-of-print and much sought after. It is augmented by a new introduction in which James Mosley explains the significance of the book, gives an account of Carter's life and work, and provides a brief summary of scholarship since A view of early typography, with notes and emendations to Carter's text.


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