John Baskerville is best known as a printer and typographer. He was very interested in the shapes of letter forms, which led him to design and manufacture his own typeface for the printing press. He printed many books, including Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Political Songster by John Freeth and a pocket dictionary. However, the Bible he printed in 1763 is regarded as his masterpiece, which is somewhat ironic since Baskerville was an atheist.
Baskerville's printings are known for being clear and carefully done. They are considered among the best examples of art printing.
Baskerville was a printer for Cambridge University from 1758-68. He also created the Baskerville font, which is still used today because of it's clarity and balance.
Baskerville is a traditional typeface. “...with its generous proportions, the Baskerville appears not very different from its predecessors. But the difference between fine and bold strokes is more marked, the lower-case serifs are almost horizontal and the emphasis on the stroke widths is almost vertical.”
Today there is a monument dedicated to John Baskerville in Birmingham, by the Baskerville House, where Baskerville once lived and worked. Columns of stone display reversed letters, which spell out “Virgil,” his very first work in 1757. The monument is known as “Industry and Genius,” which comes from a poem which praised Baskerville.
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