BASKERVILLE, the fine transitional face named for the eighteenth-century English printer, is available in several contemporary versions. The Linotype cutting used here, most faithful to the original Roman, was produced from a complete font cast from the original matrices, exhumed at Paris in 1929. For twenty years Baskerville has been a favored type with American book-makers.
BASKERVILLE was used for setting Benjamin Franklin: Printer and Publisher, pp. 352-367.
BELL, the fine English transitional-modern, was cut by Richard Austin about 1788 for John Bell, a leading English book and newspaper publisher. The English Monotype version used here was reproduced in 1931 from the original punches, then in possession of the Stephenson-Blake foundry in Sheffield. Bruce Rogers used the type (calling it Brimmer) for many fine Riverside Press books.
BELL was used for setting Some Tendencies in Modern Typography, pp. 306-312.
BEMBO, the fine Venetian old face, is a revival by English Monotype of one of the earliest Aldine romans. That was cut before 1500 by Francesco Griffo of Bologna, the designer responsible for the first Italic type a half-dozen years later, and named for Pietro Bembo, the humanist scholar (later Cardinal and secretary to Pope Leo X), whose De Aetna was printed by Aldus in 1495.
BEMBO was used for setting Printing Should Be Invisible, pp. 109-114.
BODONI BOOK, a light weight rendering of the popular A.T.F. Bodoni, is widely used in the United States for book and periodical composition. Introduced in 1910, it is not a copy of the types of the great Italian, Giambattista Bodoni, but rather a version retaining his principle of modern letter design. The lessened degree of contrast between its thick and thin lines make it gain in reading ease.