The Baskerville Project

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Monotype issued its version of Baskerville in 1923. Its release had been preceded by a revival of interest in England’s great eighteenth-century typographer. Ralph Straus and Robert L Dent’s 1907 biography, John Baskerville: a memoir, had been followed by the revival by the English foundry Stephenson Blake of the Baskerville copies issued by the Fry foundry after Baskerville’s death. Bruce Rogers, the American designer, had located the original Baskerville punches in France, whilst he was over in England advising Cambridge University Press on their design in 1917, and had had some cast for his own use. And Morris Benton had made a version for ATF in 1915-17, based on fry’s. Monotype took as its model the quarto version of Terrence’s Comoediae printed by Baskerville in 1772 in great primer types, and considerable cleaned up the rough edges. 

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