Excerpt from Type Lore: Popular Fonts of Today, Their Origin and Use; The History of the Art of Topography Succinctly Related for Practical Men

Though excellent and thorough, most available works on the history of typography contain too much detail matter for readers whose previous study, if any, has been slight. With minor movements and personalities considered along with the major ones - by periods or nations - the general and the newer readers are confused by the array of detail and in consequence often fail to grasp the main features in their order. Still another effect of all this detail - for initial study at least-is that it causes many to regard the subject a dry one. I know because they've told me 50. Yet every printer or typo grapher who is worthy of the name ought to know just how and from what his craft has developed, and the men who have achieved greatness through their efforts in the art preservative of all arts.

Type Lore is intended to supply the main facts regarding the development of types. It seeks to aid comprehension and remembrance by an ostensible discussion of the present day's most popular faces of type, which, considered in the order that their ancestors came upon the scene, serve as a background for relating the leading facts of typographical lore.

I am pleased to contemplate my invisible audience as real workers, but not as bibliophiles - in short, fellows who at the case actually Stick type or at their desks plan typographical design. Hence the recommendations as to suitability and the suggestions for the practical use of the various types. As you read Type Lore you will find many prominent and capable men quoted throughout. This is consonant with my idea that a book should be written for the benefit of its readers and notfor the author's own exploitation. This book is a presentation of what one, separating the wheat from the chaff, has found by number and calibre of proponents to seem authoritative.

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