Interest in the Baskerville books, and in fact in all books printed in what is known as “old-style” type, ceased suddenly with the inexplicable popularity attained about 1800 by the so-called “modern” face. The characteristics of the old-style letter are heavy ascending and descending strokes with small serifs, whereas the modern face accentuates the difference between the light and the heavy lines, and has more angular serifs. The engraved work of Thomas Bewick, in England, the publication of the Racine by the Didots, and the Bodoni volumes in Italy, offered the public an absolute innovation from the types with which they had been familiar since the invention of printing, and the new designs leaped into such popular favor that many of the foundries destroyed the matrices of their old-style faces, believing that the call for them had forever disappeared. As a matter of fact, it was not until the London publisher Pickering revived the old-style letter in 1844, that the modern face had any competition. Since then the two styles have been maintained side by side.
Thus the second supremacy of France came from a change in public taste rather than from economic causes. For a time there was a question whether Bodoni would win the distinction for Italy or the Didots for France, but the French printers possessed a typographical background that Bodoni lacked, and in their Racine produced a masterpiece which surpasses any production from the Bodoni Press. The Didots were not only printers and publishers, but manufactured paper and invented the process of stereotyping. While Minister to France, in 1780, Benjamin Franklin visited the Didot establishment, and, seizing the handle of a press, struck off several copies of a form with such professional familiarity as to cause astonishment.
“Don’t be surprised,” Franklin exclaimed smiling. “This, you know, is my real business.”
In 1797, the French Minister of the Interior placed at the disposal of Pierre Didot l’aîné that portion of the Louvre which had formerly been occupied by the Imprimerie Royale. Here was begun, and completed in 1801, an edition of Racine in three volumes that aroused the enthusiasm of booklovers all over the world, and brought to Pierre Didot the glory of being recognized as a master-printer worthy to assume the mantle of Robert Étienne. This is the typographic achievement I would select as the masterpiece of its period.
DIDOT’S RACINE, Paris, 1801
A Frontispiece
Designed by Prud’hon. Engraved by Marius (12 × 8 inches)
Title Page of Didot’s Racine, Paris, 1801 (12 × 8 inches)