Valerie Browne Lester Books

For most people the name Bodoni conjures up the elegant and frequently used typeface the master typographer designed and engraved in the eighteenth century. But until this volume, there has been no full-scale attempt in English to present a complete picture of the man, his times, and the extraordinary work he created over a long and fully engaged lifetime. Valerie Lester has examined the documents, the sources, the matrices, and the books themselves firsthand and has written a compelling and penetrating portrait not only of the printer himself, but of the turbulent times in which he lived, with an emphasis on his adopted city of Parma and the cultural climate that permeated it, and much of Italy, in the late eighteenth century. Fully illustrated with examples of his work and the personalities who played important roles in his life, this biography presents "the prince of printers" at his singular best. Book jacket.