Typefounders and composing-machine makers have filled the type cases of the printers of this country with Caslons that have been improved (!), recut, modified, adjusted to “lining” systems, made bold, disfigured, sawed-off and ill-treated generally; and as they bring out good copies of the original letter, it is to be hoped that, so far as possible, sale of the defective and offending type-faces and matrices will be discontinued.
William Caslon died in 1766, and the business was continued by William Caslon the second, and then by William Caslon the third. Mrs. Henry Caslon conducted the business in 1796, when was brought out the modernized Caslon (Example [484-B]) that was probably the model for the type we know as Scotch Roman. This modernization was a concession to the demand for types in the new style that had been designed by Giambattista Bodoni, an Italian typefounder.
The influence of Bodoni’s ideas in type design was such that Caslon Oldstyle was not included in the 1805 specimen book of the Caslon foundry, and did not again appear therein until 1860, a year after the face had been reintroduced to America by a Philadelphia foundry.
The story of the revival of Caslon Oldstyle in England has been told in these words:
In the year 1843, Mr. Whittingham, of the Chiswick Press, waited on Mr. Caslon to ask his aid in carrying out the then new idea of printing, in appropriate type, “The Diary of Lady Willoughby,” a work of fiction, the period and diction of which were supposed to be of the reign of Charles I. The original matrices of the first William Caslon having been fortunately preserved, Mr. Caslon undertook to supply a small font of great-primer. So well was Mr. Whittingham satisfied with the result of his experiment that he determined on printing other volumes in the same style, and eventually he was supplied with a complete series of all the old fonts.
America took part early in the revival of Caslon’s old-style types, for in 1858 matrices were brought to the United States by the Johnson Type Foundry, afterward MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan, now the Philadelphia branch of the American Type Founders Company.
The first size made in this country was brevier, which was announced in the “Typographic Advertiser,” the company’s house-organ, of January, 1859. Six months later thirteen sizes were shown, and in 1865 Caslon Oldstyle was made in sizes from pearl to six-line pica.
The decorative Italic types, known as Swash letters, were not until 1916 included in the American fonts, but these, redrawn by T. M. Cleland, are now procurable.
Selection of Caslon Oldstyle, in 1892, for the text and advertisements of Vogue, the use of the letter by Will Bradley at the Wayside Press, in 1896, and the general old-style revival, influenced by the work of William Morris, of the Kelmscott Press, in England, were causes that led to the present popularity of Caslon Oldstyle.
This Caslon style of type-face is one of the few standard letters that has practically unlimited usefulness. Properly treated, it looks well on any class of printing, from a business card to the text and advertising pages of periodicals. It may be seen in action in this book by referring to Examples [18], [34], [64], [65], [66], [67], [68], [81], [82], [86], [96], [119], [121], [126], [127], [132], [133], [134], [135], [138], [150], [151], [167], [168], [169], [172], [178], [180], [188], [190], [191], [195], [203], [215], [221], [222], [223], [224], [225], [228], [230], [231], [232], [236], [239], [245], [246], [247], [248], [249], [250], [260], [262], [268], [274], [282], [284], [287], [289], [290], [292], [294], [296], [297], [300], [374], [375], [382], [384], [385], [393], [394], [396], [426], [429], [430], [433], [434], [436], [438], [439], [440], [441], [448], [450], [451], [453], [455], [459], [460] and [461]; the [frontispiece]; upper specimen, page [21]; reproductions, page [23]; insert opposite page [32]; upper specimen, page [33].