A Tally of Types

First edition

A Tally of Types is a book in the field of typography, authored by the type designer Stanley Morison in 1953, showcasing significant typeface designs produced during his tenure at the Lanston Monotype Corporation for their hot metal typesetting machines during the 1920s and 1930s in England.

According to the author's associate, Brooke Crutchley, University Printer at the Cambridge University Press and the person that commissioned this book, "This work first appeared in 1953, when it was issued as a Christmas keepsake to 'friends of the University Printer in printing and publishing'". Only 450 copies were printed and distributed of this original edition.

The author, a scholarly British pioneer historian and typographer, was the driving force behind Monotype's dynamic typographic programme of research and revival of representative historical typographic models. This book was compiled and written at Crutchley's request.

This book, now republished many times, has proven to be an important source of information on typography. In the 1973 edition, three appendices were added, describing typeface designs developed since the 1953 printing. A recent edition includes an introduction by digital typography pioneer Mike Parker. A Tally of Types holds a critical account, in Morison's erudite style, of the typeface designs cut under his watchful eye during typography's most influential typeface revival project, turning his detailed insight into the inner workings of early 20th century type design into an enduring record of the practice of typography.

Typeface designs present in the Tally

• Bruce Rogers Centaur Roman
• Alfred Fairbank's —rumored— Bembo Roman
• Alfred Fairbank's Arrighi Italic
• Fairbank Italic
• Bembo Italic
• Poliphilus Roman
• Blado Italic
• 'Garamond' Roman
• Granjon Italic
• Fournier Roman and Italic
• Barbou Roman
• Baskerville Roman and Italic
• Bell Roman and Italic
• F W Goudy's Modern Roman and Italic
• Eric Gill's Perpetua Roman
• Eric Gill's Felicity Italic
• Stanley Morison and Victor Lardent's Times New Roman

Appendices added in the 1973 edition

• Jan van Krimpen's Van Dijk, by Netty Hoeflake
• Ehrhardt, by Harry Carter
• Jan van Krimpen's Romulus, John Dreyfus

Further reading

• Nicolas Barker, Stanley Morison, 1972. ISBN 0-674-83425-9.
• James Moran, Stanley Morison, his typographic achievement, Lund Humphries, London, 1971.
• Stanley Morison, Selected Essays on the History of Letter-Forms in Manuscript and Print, Vols. 1 & 2, Cambridge University Press, 1981.
• Stanley Morison, Type Designs of the Past and Present, The Fleuron, 1926.

External links

• There is an incomplete preview version available online at Google Books