Byways among English books / by Cyril Davenport.

  • Cyril James Humphries Davenport
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Byways among English books / by Cyril Davenport. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    many finely printed books of a simple and unornamental kind. Morris’s best types are founded on Gothic originals, but they all have in time a strong and marked individuality. He did at first begin with Roman type, but found it to be unsympathetic to his own natural taste, so he modified it until he developed his own beautiful “ Chaucer ” type, so called because in it he printed his finest book, an edition Fig. 3.—The Kelmscott Device of Chaucer’s Poems, published in 1896 and measuring i6f inches by nj inches. This wonderful book is ornamented throughout with beautiful woodcut illustrations and delightful borders and initial letters. The decorative effect of many of the pages of this book has never been equalled in the case of any other printed book produced in any part of the world. Most of Morris’s books are printed on paper, but some of them are on vellum, and these should be acquired whenever possible.