Daniel Berkeley Updike, of the Merrymount Press, Boston, died in December, 1941. Little notice was taken in this country of his death, owing to the state of war and to the fact that our typographical journals had in consequence ceased publication. This omission certainly did not mean that there was any falling off in our interest in Updike as a printer or in his chief published work, Printing Types, their History, Forms and Use. That book first appeared almost a quarter of a century ago. It is always worth a rereading and no excuse need be made for returning to it once more.

Printing Types has become an established classic among books on typographical history, one of the books which will not be superseded for generations, in the category of such works as T.B. Reed’s History of the Old English Letter Foundries and Charles Enschedé’s Fonderies de caractères dans les Pays-Bas. Among the reasons which have contributed to its success is perhaps first of all its comprehensiveness. The author deals with all periods in due proportion, and does not, as so many writers on the history of the printed book have done, leave the impression that printing of interest ceased with Christophe Plantin, to be revived again by William Morris. We may cite Updike’s account of French printing in the eighteenth century, including the story of P.S. Fournier and the early Didots, his description of the Spanish book and of the book in England about 1800,of William Bulmer and his contemporaries and the study of type-specimen books and sheets. Better-known periods are not neglected; witness some seventy-five pages out of 505 devoted to Incunables. A second factor in establishing the reputation of his book is to be found in Updike’s being not only an historian but a practising printer. The contemplation of a book suggests to him the problem facing the printer in laying out the material before him. For example, in vol. 1, p. 161, in describing a book printed by L. Torrentino at Florence in 1550, he notes the method of arranging the title-page and detects in the book a falling away from an earlier simplicity in the mixture of types used. Many books are examined in this manner in a refreshing style seldom attempted by his predecessors, who have been generally bibliographers or librarians. As the work of a printer Printing Types contains material more often found in manuals dealing with the technical side of the craft, such as the chapter on the evolution of the point system of type measurement, and that excellent chapter (chapter xxiii) towards the end of vol. 2 on the choice of types for a printing office. Finally a great ‛contribution to the book’s success is made by the illustrations, 367 in number, all excellent, with the exception of those which have had to be considerably reduced.

The comprehensive nature of the work has been stressed, but in this respect there is one omission to be noted, that is in the treatment of German printing, more particularly of the Reformation period. Considering the space given to Johann Froben of Basle, more should certainly have been said of his contemporaries in Germany. In the matter of book decoration and woodcut illustrations the period was one of the most remarkable in the history of the book, and one of considerable interest for its typography; it is true, however, that this typography is outside the main stream of the development of European types. Updike’s book is based on lectures delivered, some of them during the war of 1914–18, which may account for this neglect and for one of the blunders in the book, the confusion between Johann Petri of Nuremberg, who issued a type specimen sheet in 1525, and the Basle printer of the same name, a mistake not corrected in the second edition of 1937. Incidentally it should be pointed out that, for technical reasons, in this second edition the corrections could not, for the most part, be made in the body of the text, but are added as notes, a necessity unfortunate for the student. For example, Beatrice Warde’s rediscovery of the specimen book of Jean Jannon of Sedan, 1621, and the clearing up of the mystery of the origin of the so-called ‛caractères de l’Université’, is duly referred to in the notes, but the text remains the same, with the exception of the correction of Jannon’s name for Garamond’s on p. 238, and the alteration of fig. 168. The consequence is that a passage which was originally obscure still remains obscure in the main text of the book.

These notes, however, are not a belated review of Printing Types, but an attempt to suggest in what directions some future Updike might be expanded or modified as a result of recent studies. The publication of Printing Types was itself one of the causes which have promoted the interest in typographic studies. There is, for example, the question of the vocabulary to be used in describing types, and again the subject of the international exchange of types. When Updike wrote, the term Rotunda or Round Text for the Italian form of gothic had not come into vogue, at any rate among English writers. If it had been known to Updike its use would certainly have added brevity and clarity to a number of passages. For example, on p. 63 of vol. 1, of a Rotunda of Koberger’s he writes ‛a type less pointed than the first gothic types, reminding one a little of the early black-letter types of Italy and Spain’. Does not the term Rotunda convey all that in one word? Again, on p. 121 of vol. 1, of a common Rotunda used by Wynkyn De Worde, ‛the smaller has a round quality which is a little like the Italian gothic type of the time’. Then there is the term lettre de somme; on p. 63 of vol. 1 it is used of a type since called fere-humatistica or gotico-antiqua, both terms which Updike would in any case have declined to adopt as being too precious. Elsewhere it is used of a Rotunda, e.g. on p. 60 of vol. 1. The term does not appear to have been known to the medieval writing masters, and should probably be abandoned. The useful group of Upper-Rhine types was unknown to Updike as a group, and consequently on fig. 77 he calls an Upper-Rhine type used by Froschouer at Zürich a Schwabacher.

The term Old Style is of very frequent occurrence in the pages of Printing Types. It is defined, or partially defined in a note on p. 18 of vol. 1, as the less modelled design in contrast with modern. To the American printer Old Style appears to mean a type like Caslon. Our printers prefer the term Old Face, as they are accustomed to the use of Old Style for a particular design, the revived old face of Miller & Richard, c. 1860. When describing types of the sixteenth century there seems to be some vagueness as to whether a particular type is to be called Old Style or not. For example, a book printed by Torrentino at Florence in 1550 (vol. 1, p. 162, fig. 103) is described as set in an ‛old style font’. On p. 143 of vol. 1 the Vesalius of Oporinus of Basle is ‛printed in a noble old style type’. A Josephus, Paris, 1557 (vol. 1, p. 200) is in a roman ‛less classical and more old style than we have seen hitherto’. Apparently Updike finds the roman of the Hypnerotomachia, Paris, 1546, or Fine’s De rebus mathematicis, Vascosan, Paris, 1556, more classical, i.e. more akin to Italian fifteenth-century romans. A little further on, a book by C. Paradin, De Tournes, Lyons, 1561 (vol. 1, p. 203), shows ‛a robust old style roman’. But all these romans are either Garamonds or closely modelled on Garamond. If any or all of these romans are to be distinguished as a group from Caslon, is it because they are less modelled? In that case a name is needed under which they might be classified. Writing of the seventeenth century in France, Updike says ‛French types became less Italian and more what we now call old style letter’. In the first half of the century at any rate the romans used were predominantly Garamonds, e.g. in the Delbene, 1609 (vol. 1, p. 106). On p. 226, vol. 1, Updike writes of a book set in one of the early romans of Firmin Didot ‛the general conception of its type is still old style, but pared down to the last degree’. After that one can but feel that a fuller definition of this elusive term is sadly needed.

Fig. 1. The roman shown in Updike’s Printing Types (fig. 108) from Paulus Manutius, Antiquitatum Romanarum liber de legibus. Aldus, Venice, 1559.

Much of this vagueness could be avoided if the designer of a particular type described could be named or its origin traced, and it is this direction that future historians of type design development may be expected to follow. When Updike wrote such knowledge was not available and he certainly had no such plan in view. Here are some examples of the kind of note that might be made. The Vesalius, printed by Oporinus at Basle,1553 (or rather 1555),is set in a roman cut by the French designer Robert Granjon (it appears in the 1628 specimen book published by the Vatican Press at Rome), and the same type is shown in Updike’s fig. 102 from a book printed by Torrentino at Florence, a printer who was well stocked with French types. His fig. 104 shows a page from a Venice book partly set in an italic to which the author refers several times, always in connexion with Italian books. This italic appeared first at Basle and was probably taken to Venice by Peter Schöffer the younger about 1540. Schöffer may have cut the type. At least we know from the autobiography of Thomas Platter that Schöffer was well stocked with all manner of punches. Also this italic was sold all over Europe and there is hardly one centre of printing in which it may not be found. Updike’s fig. 108 is a page from a Venice book of 1623, set in a roman which dates back some sixty years. It was used by Paolo Manuzio in the books which he printed for the Accademia della Fama at Venice from 1558 to 1572, and became a common European type. His fig. 119 from a Florence book of 1691 is set in a roman described by Updike as of ‛a distinctly modern note’. The same type appears again in his fig. 217 among Dutch types. In the second edition Updike has noted that this roman is the pseudo ‛Janson’, wrongly attributed to the Leipzig founder, Anton Janson, and still in use today; but the strange fact that one of the first printers to use it was working at Florence is not noted. In fig. 152 he shows an italic from the Delacolonge specimen book of 1773, which the author says ‛appears to be of early date’. The same italic is shown on fig. 168, where it is described as ‛Garamond’s Caractères de l’Université’. This figure has been changed in the second edition, where it is recognized that the true, i.e. Jannon’s, ’Caractères de l’Université’ are shown on fig.172. The italic of fig.152 was used by Henri Estienne at Geneva from 1564. In design it agrees with the series of Robert Granjon’s italics which are shown on the specimen sheets of the Berner-Luther foundry of Frankfurt, but this size is not there. His from a Paris book of 1775, shows what Updike calls ‛a very modelled old style font’. This design goes back to about 1570, when it is found at both Basle and Frankfurt. The specimen in Updike has some eighteenth-century features such as the capital J and may be a copy of the original design. It was in the foundry of Claude Lamesle, as may be seen in that founder’s specimen book of 1742. Of fig. 229, from a book printed at Granada in 1545, the author says the page ‛might have been taken bodily from one of Froben’s editions’. The types are in fact of Basle origin, the capitals being Froben’s and the body type the usual Basle roman exported to many countries. His fig. 230, from a book printed at Alcalá in 1569, is described as being set ‛in a pure and roman type’, a type which is surely the Garamond shown on the Luther foundry’s sheet, and perhaps the same as that shown on fig. 239, from a book of 1774.

Fig. 2. The roman shown in Updike’s Printing Types (fig. 158; from Saint Lambert’s Saisons, Paris, 1775) and attributed there to French sources. From Bartholomaeus Sacchi de Platina, Historia de vitis pontificum. Maternus Cholinus, Cologne, 1574.

In the chapters on English books there are many reproductions which illustrate the dependence of our printers before Caslon on foreign type-cutters. In the text Updike here follows closely the account given by T.B. Reed in his Old English Letter Foundries, as, for instance, when he says of De Worde that he was his own type-cutter, and in the praise which he bestows on John Day for his typography. Day receives the credit for the excellent types which he imported from the Low Countries and from France, e.g. the Double Pica roman and italic of figs. 256 and 257, and the Double Pica italic of fig. 284. On p. 27 of vol. 2, the italic used in a book printed at Antwerp by Hubert Goltz in 1557 is said to resemble ‛some used by John Day’. If Updike had not been under the impression that most large printers of the middle of the sixteenth century still cut their own types, he would surely have recognized that in this case it was not a matter of the resemblance of types, but of their identity. In the description on p. 127 of vol. 2 of two other books printed by Day, the Euclid of 1570 and Roger Ascham’s Scholemaster, 1571, it should be added that the italics referred to are those of Robert Granjon. On pp. 13 5 and 136 of vol. 2 an edition of the Theological Works of Charles Leslie printed by William Bowyer in 1721 is described and the ‛old style types’ are said to be ‛no doubt Dutch’. The italic used is that of Christoffel van Dyck, and the roman is probably also Dutch, at least it is found on the specimen sheet of an Amsterdam printer, Joannes Kannewet, issued c. 1710. It is even more interesting to find that the same roman and italic was used in John Selden’s Opera, 1726 (fig. 290). Updike, misled by John Nichols and other authorities, assigned the Selden types to Caslon.

That a printer of Updike’s experience should have failed to notice some of these parallels in the plates which he himself selected, is due to the fact that he was not expecting or looking for any such thing. He had not realized the implications of the statement that by 1540 type cutting and founding was an industry separate from that of printing, and that from that period one may expect to find any good type in the hands of many printers and even in several countries.