An Essay of Typography

1931

Special Collections Z246 GF47 1931

Pigotts, Buckinghamshire: Eric Gill and René Hague

In a talk to the First Edition Club in London on 8 February 1933, Gill said: ‘What is now chiefly wanted is a belief in the future rather than a worship of the past. Great harm is being done by the resuscitation of the forms of bygone days. Poliphilus, Blado, Fournier, Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni – to the scrap heap with the lot of them. Let those who are working at book-making outside the industrial system…invent new founts of type.’ This first edition signed copy of his Essay of Typography (1931) is printed in 12 point Joanna, a typeface Gill designed and named after his daughter. This book was the fourth book from the press of Gill and René Hague, his son-in-law, and the first to utilise the Joanna type.