Ten things Baskerville, so do come along

As I’ve related in other posts here, ours is widely known around town as the Anna M. Baskerville house.

For a writer and editor like me, though, Baskerville was also an important typeface in the advancement of printing.

It was the body type of the first newspaper I edited, the Belmont Hilltopper. Yup, back in high school. Our headlines were mostly Bodoni, another classic that’s mostly vanished in the internet era.

Here’s an introduction to its founder and a bit more.

So here goes for this week’s dive into arcane wonders.

1. The typeface was designed in the mid-1750s by John Baskerville in Birmingham, England, as an intermediary between older styles, including one of my favorites by William Caslon.
2. Baskerville increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serif faces sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. Maybe you take that for granted, but it does enhance readability. Trust me.
3. He was a wealthy industrialist who started his career as a teacher of calligraphy and a carver of gravestones before making a fortune as a manufacturer of varnished lacquer goods. You never know where you’ll encounter a true inventor or artist.
4. In 1758, he was appointed University Printer to the Cambridge University Press, where in 1763 he published his master work, a folio-size Bible. Glory be!
5. On his death his widow Sarah eventually sold his material to a Paris literary society, placing them out of reach of British printing, not that the move stopped imitations. The French, on the other hand, seem to have loved his openings.
6. Oh, my, the technical discussions lead to a true rabbit hole of fine distinctions. I’m not going there, though some of you readers definitely should.
7. John Baskerville is also noted for inventing a wove paper, smoother than laid paper that allowed for better printing impressions. One advance can definitely lead to another.
8. Even as an avowed atheist, he was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge where he printed The Book of Common Prayer in in 1762 and a splendid Bible in 1763.
9. By the way, you won’t find a town named Baskerville on a map. There is, though, a Baskerville Hall in Wales.
10. A more likely place to find Baskerville is in the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, one of the most popular novels ever.