Well before the end of the first century of typography, the printer had brought to the book the basic forms of nearly every element that he was to contribute. The styles of the three major typefaces had been formalized to the point at which little other than refinement remained to be added to them; most of the business and craft functions that were to mark the production of books down to the present had been identified and differentiated; the printed book had achieved an acceptance comparable to, and an audience far greater than, that of the manuscript volume; and publishing specialties had already emerged. Fully one-third of all of the books printed during the period of the incunabula—that is from the 1450s to 1500—were illustrated. The printing of music had become practical, and the practice of numbering the pages of a volume in sequence had been adopted.

The printer’s mark, an identifying device, was used—though only briefly at first—in the typographic book from the very beginning. Almost as early, and probably more important, was the typographer’s addition of the colophon, in which the printer-publisher recorded the place and date of publication, asserted his claim to credit for his role in the production of the work, advertised the merits of the enterprise, and, on occasion, attempted to protect his property from the depredations of rival printer-publishers. Indeed, Caxton turned the colophon into a short essay in which he included, in addition to the normal elements, an editor’s preface and a dedication. Whether or not it is accurate to assert that the title page—the major nonmanuscript feature of the typographic book—emerged from the colophon, it is a fact that the title page took over some of the content of the colophon, which, however, continued to exist.

The first title page was probably used by Gutenberg’s successor, Peter Schöffer, in 1463 on a papal bull. It was Schöffer’s only known use of the device, and, like the other early versions that followed, it was really—in today’s terms—a half title. The full title page did not appear until 1476, when one Erhard Ratdolt in Venice used it on an astronomical and astrological calendar. The device was well established by the end of the incunabula period. Continuing the tradition of relative anonymity of authorship of the manuscript books, the earliest pages never, and later ones only seldom, revealed the author of the work. The title page, apparently, was meant to provide, first, a protective cover for the text within and, second, an opportunity for advertising for the publisher-printer.

The middle years

The first really notable roman type had been cut by Jenson for a text by Cicero in 1470. It had been replaced in popularity and importance by the romans that Francesco Griffo cut for Manutius in the late 15th century. The first italic had been a Griffo design introduced by Manutius in his pocket editions early in the 16th century. These two faces had, in turn, been displaced in European typography by letters designed in the mid-16th century by Garamond in France: a roman based on Griffo’s cutting and an italic based on a form put forth by Ludovico degli Arrighi. The Garamond versions of these faces were to be of prime importance in European typographical work until the end of the 16th century, during which time so many adaptations of them were produced that “Garamond type” came to be used as a generic term.

By the end of the 16th century, typography in Europe had, generally speaking, deteriorated in vigour and quality. In France, the first comeback step was taken in 1640 by Louis XIII, who, under the influence of Cardinal de Richelieu, established the Imprimerie Royale at the Louvre. In 1692 Louis XIV ordered the creation of a commission charged with developing the design of a new type to be composed of letters arrived at on “scientific” principles. The commission, whose deliberations were fully recorded, worked mathematically, drawing and redrawing each letter on squares divided into 2,304 equal parts. The approach was far removed from the style of the calligraphers, whose work had provided models for all of the important alphabets until then. It is probably fortunate that Philippe Grandjean, who was called on to do the punch cutting, did not feel himself to be under constraint to carry out his own work with the mathematical precision of the commission members who had drawn the patterns. Using the basic designs merely as suggestive, he cut a type that almost immediately drove the Garamond style from its favoured position. Known as Romain du Roi, it was used first (1702) in one of the médaille books that were then popular as commemorative devices. As might be expected, the type is notable for its regularity and precision; there is a good, though not exaggerated, contrast between the thick and thin strokes, and the addition of flat serifs on the lowercase letters was effective.

Though intended for the exclusive use of the Imprimerie Royale, the new roman was immediately copied by other designers, one of the most active of whom was the founder Pierre-Simon Fournier, who is also remembered for his creation of a wide range of printers’ devices that could be combined into festoons, borders, and headpieces and tailpieces for the heavily ornamented éditions de luxe that were popular in France then and that were to remain so until the Revolution.

It is reasonable to say—as did designer-theorist William Morris—that the Romain du Roi replaced the calligrapher with the engineer as a typographical influence. In general, the calligrapher was not to be reintroduced until Morris himself performed the operation as an ideological matter in the 19th century. Before that could happen, typography was to undergo further modifications under the influence of three great designers, two in England and one in Italy.

William Caslon, who issued his first type-specimen sheet in 1734, made a number of refinements of the Garamond style and created faces that have become traditional and are still much in use. Caslon’s refinement of the Garamond version of the Aldine roman was essentially straightforward and unmannered except for a slightly pronounced contrast between the thin strokes and the thick ones. The letters were graceful and well balanced. Serifs were bracketed (see above). They were well cut, and they made up into type blocks that were comfortable to read.

The type won wide acceptance and became well known in the American colonies, where it was introduced by Benjamin Franklin. It was the type in which a Baltimore printer issued the official copies of the United States Declaration of Independence.

Even more significant changes in typographical fashions were achieved about a quarter of a century later by John Baskerville in Birmingham. Baskerville, who taught calligraphy, introduced further variations in the spirit of Caslon. His letters suggest a greater concern for aesthetics. Their feeling of gracefulness is more pronounced. They were more original than Caslon’s. His roman letters were open and legible; his italics tended to be spidery and quite pinched. Open and quite rounded, they are, perhaps, more self-consciously pleasing to the eye. As a book designer, Baskerville combined his new faces with exaggerated page margins and relatively wide spacings between letters to suggest new directions in style. By the use of special papers, improved press methods, and special inks, he achieved an effect of almost glaring contrast, an effect heightened by his preference for emphasizing the typographer rather than the illustrator or the engraver. Though his acknowledged masterpiece, a Cambridge Bible, was not printed until 1763, he was an important influence on English and European typography almost from the first printing of his Virgil in 1757.

In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni enthusiastically took up the principle of page design as worked out by Baskerville, though not his typefaces. Further modifying the Aldine roman of Garamond, he mechanically varied the difference between the thick and thin strokes of his letters to achieve the ultimate contrast possible in that direction. His letters are rather narrower than those of either Caslon or Baskerville. He exaggerated his thick lines and reduced the thin ones almost—it seems at times—to the point of disappearance. Like Baskerville, he used opulent papers and inks blended for special brilliance. His pages were not easy to read, but he became, in the words of Stanley Morison, the typographical idol of the man of taste, and his “plain”—though deliberately and artfully contrived—designs were an important factor in the decline in importance of the édition de luxe and its replacement by works more austere in feeling, more modern even to today’s eyes. He set what was, in general, to be the standard book style of the world until the appearance of William Morris.