Dear ARLIS Member,
Oak Knoll Press's latest title explores the literature of 19th-century
typefounders' catalogs....
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ALPHABETS TO ORDER:
The Literature of Nineteenth-Century Typefounders’ Specimens
by Alastair Johnston
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Specimen books issued by typefounders to show their styles of type
available for sale also revealed a lot about the reading habits, politics,
amusements and whimsies of the British and North American founders in the
nineteenth century. Combing typographic scholarship and literary criticism,
Alastair Johnston presents and discusses hundreds of examples of texts that
show the founders’ interests and preoccupations from the arcane to the
mundane.
Johnston also traces paths that have since been explored by concrete poets,
book artists, dadaists, nonsense poets, performance artists and other
marginal users of letterforms.
Alastair Johnston is a native of Glasgow, Scotland and currently resides in
Berkeley, California. He founded Poltroon Press in 1975 with artist Frances
Butler. Johnston has written bibliographies of three San Francisco
literary small pressesAuerhahn, White Rabbit and Zephyrus Image. In 1988
as an Artist in Residence at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY,
he produced Musings on the Vernacular, an international study of folk
lettering. Co-published with The British Library.
Late November 2000, hardcover, 8"x 10", 222 pages
ISBN 1-58456-009-6 / Order No. 60132-EM / Price $39.95
Sales rights: Worldwide except in UK. Available in UK from The British Library
You can also order this book at http://www.oakknoll.com/pressrel/alphabet.html
Michael Guessford
Publicity & Marketing Director
__________________________________________________________________
Oak Knoll Books (ABAA and ILAB) / Oak Knoll Press / St. Paul's Bibliographies
310 Delaware Street / New Castle DE 19720
Phone (302) 328-7232 / Toll-free 1-800-996-2556 / Fax (302) 328-7274
Email: [log in to unmask] / Web: http://www.oakknoll.com
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