Stanley Morison

Macmillan London Ltd, London, first edition, 1972. Cloth, 8vo, 24 cm,. 566 pp + 16 pp plates. A biography of the great typographer and eminence grise of The Times, Stanley Morison. From the blurb: "...When the war ended, Morison rebuilt his career. At the avant-garde Pelican Press he began to make a name as a typographer. He read widely and travelled all over the continent. With the Monotype appointment, he was able to put his theories on printing types into practice. Garamond, Poliphilus, Basker-ville, Fournier - the designs poured out, and took the printing world by storm. In 1924 he went to America and there met Beatrice Warde and her husband Frederic, both typographically talented, whom he brought back to Europe. After a brief but fertile partnership there was an explosion: Morison separated from his wife and Beatrice from her husband A devout Catholic could not remarry; he took refuge in more and more work. In 1925 he had become typographical adviser to the Cambridge University Press, run by his friend Walter Lewis, and the standard he set there made Britain the foremost country in the world ut the design and quality of book-production. At the same time, he wrote and published countless books and articles on printing and, with his other great friend Oliver Simon, edited The Fleuron, the typographical annual that came to be the bible of the movement that Morison stood for.. Mr Barker has written an account of Morison’s life at once balanced and humane, with a rare degree of insight into his complex and fascinating character. He has been able to draw on the private papers of most of those whom Morison knew best, as well as on the archives of the Monotype Corporation and The Times. It will be recognised both as the definitive life of Stanley Morison, and as the authoritative account of typography in the twentieth century. Covers slightly marked, otherwise Near Very Good in torn and tape-repaired dustwrapper.