THE PURPOSE of this site is to provide copyright-free images of John Baskerville’s work as a printer for download and re-use for non-commercial purposes only.

   John Baskerville lived in Birmingham in the middle of the Georgian period. Innovative & naturally enquiring, he prospered as a manufacturer of fashionable japanned goods, built a fine house & used his success to fund a new printing office. From 1757 he began publishing books, fine works of exceptional craftsmanship, inventiveness & an understanding of letter-forms that developed out of his early experience as a writing master. He introduced new concepts in typographic style, new italic types based upon the latest models of writing in roundhand, & roman types that broke with the traditional old face & shared common ground with late seventeenth century developments in France. Combined with his incomparable skill in the layout of pages, Baskerville published the finest-looking books ever printed in England, especially his quarto classics which clothed works of ‘Reputation’ in a style worthy of the Georgian era.