IMISSON, 1785.
Lemoine mentions an ingenious person of this name, “who, among other pursuits, made some progress in the art of Letter Founding, and actually printed several small popular novels at Manchester with wood-cuts cut by himself. But other mechanical pursuits took him off, and death removed him in 1791.”[735]
MYLES SWINNEY, 1785.
This provincial typographer was printer and proprietor of the Birmingham Chronicle in 1774, and appears to have commenced a letter foundry shortly after the breaking up of Baskerville’s establishment. His shops were in the High Street, Birmingham; and in Bisset’s Magnificent Directory (1800) a view of his premises is given, including the Type Foundry. He is styled Letter Founder, Bookseller and Printer, in the Directories of 1785, and subsequently added to his other pursuits that of Medicine Vendor. In 1793 he was a member of the Association of Founders at that time in existence; and, about the year 1803, issued a neat Specimen Book of twenty pages, comprising a series of Roman and Italic and a few Ornamented and Shaded letters. The notice accorded to him in the Magnificent Directory is very complimentary:—“This useful Branch of the Typographic Art, immediately on the demise of the late celebrated Baskerville, was resumed and is now continued, with persevering industry and success, by Mr. Swinney, whose elegant Specimens of Printing add celebrity to the other manufactures of this Emporium of the Arts.” {353}
The Poetic Survey round Birmingham accompanying the Directory, immortalizes our founder in the following couplet:
- “The Gods at Swinney’s Foundry stood amaz’d,
- And at each curious Type and Letter gaz’d.”
- “The Gods at Swinney’s Foundry stood amaz’d,
- And at each curious Type and Letter gaz’d.”
Among his workmen was John Handy, a former punch cutter for Baskerville.[736] Mr. Swinney died in 1812, aged 74; having been printer and proprietor of the Birmingham Chronicle for nearly fifty years.