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First published in Great Britain by Sheed and Ward 1931
Published in Penguin Classics 2013
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-0-141-39536-4
Composition of Time & Place
Lettering
Typography
Punch-cutting
Of Paper and Ink
The Procrustean Bed
The Instrument
The Book
But Why Lettering?
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¶ The theme of this book is Typography, and Typography as it is affected by the conditions of the year 1931. The conflict between industrialism & the ancient methods of handicraftsmen which resulted in the muddle of the 19th century is now coming to its term.
¶ But tho’ industrialism has now won an almost complete victory, the handicrafts are not killed, & they cannot be quite killed because they meet an inherent, indestructible, permanent need in human nature. (Even if a man’s whole day be spent as a servant of an industrial concern, in his spare time he will make something, if only a window box flower garden.)
¶ The two worlds can see one another distinctly and without recrimination, both recognising what is good in the other—the power of industrialism, the humanity of craftsmanship. No longer is there any excuse for confusion of aim, inconsistency of methods or hybridism in production; each world can leave the other free in its own sphere.
¶ Whether or no industrialism has ‘come to stay’ is not our affair, but certainly craftsmanship will be always with us — like the poor. And the two worlds are now absolutely distinct. The imitation ‘period work’ and the imitation handicrafts merchants alone are certainly doomed. Handicrafts standards are as absurd for mechanised industry as machine standards are absurd for the craftsman.
¶ The application of these principles to the making of letters and the making of books is the special business of this book.
¶ This book was written in 1930, and now that a second and cheaper edition is called for it seems desirable to re-write a great part of it. It was one of the author’s chief objects to describe two worlds — that of industrialism and that of the human workman — & to define their limits. It is one of the book’s chief faults that that object was but imperfectly remembered. It has not been possible to correct this, but the book has been amended in many small particulars and a chapter added.
¶ Six years is a considerable time in human life, and if it be true that the witty remarks one makes at a dinner party seem peculiarly foolish the next morning, how much more does the enthusiasm of 1930 appear foolish in 1936. The two worlds are still with us; the industrial world continuing in its diabolical direction, the humane world indestructible by its very nature. But the divorce between them is even more complete, and the sphere of the handicraftsman even more curtailed.
¶ The determination to have all necessary things made by machinery, & to organise machine industry in such a way as to have only a few hour’s work per day is now much more clearly defined than it was even six years ago. And printing is one of the obviously necessary things, & to do it in any other way than by machinery appears more and more absurd. Thus one after the other the crafts, which were formerly the workman’s means to culture, are being mechanised more or less completely, & now only such things as musical composition & painting pictures & giving lectures on the wireless, demand the actual responsible skill of the human being who does them. All other workmen are released from any other considerations but economic ones. It was possible to say these things six years ago; but to-day many more people are conscious of their truth. The newspapers are full of evidences that people are beginning to see the issue clearly. The widespread propaganda of financial reform is alone evidence of a great change in people’s minds. They see now very clearly that the old man of the sea is a financial rather than a social tyrant.
¶ The industrial world may be wrecked by its bad finance and the wars which bad finance foments, or, as seems less likely, a brave new world of logically organised machine production may be achieved. In either case human communications will continue, printing will still be called for, & much in this book may still be useful.