Stanley Morison

Early life and career

Stanley Morison was born on 6 May 1889, at Wanstead, Essex, but spent most of his childhood and early adult years (1896–1912) in London at the family home in Fairfax Road, Harringay. He was self-taught, having left school after his father abandoned his family.

In 1913 Morison became an editorial assistant on The Imprint magazine.

Morison was one of the founders of The Guild of the Pope's Peace, an organization created to promote Pope Benedict XV's calls for peace in the face of the First World War.

On the imposition of conscription in 1916 during First World War, he was a conscientious objector, and was imprisoned. Like his friend Eric Gill, Morison was a convert to Catholicism, distancing him from many of his later colleagues. Morison married Mabel Williamson, a teacher, in 1916; the marriage was an unhappy one and Morison rapidly separated from his wife.

In 1918 he became design supervisor at the Pelican Press, which published material critical of the war. He moved on to a similar position at the Cloister Press. In 1922, he was a founder-member of the Fleuron Society dedicated to typographic matters (a fleuron being a typographic flower or ornament). He edited the society's journal, The Fleuron, from 1925 to 1930. The quality of the publication's artwork and printing was considered exceptional. From 1923 to 1925, he was also a staff editor/writer for the Penrose Annual, a graphic arts journal.

With the Monotype Corporation

From 1923 to 1967, Morison was a typographic consultant for the Monotype Corporation. In the 1920s and 1930s, his work at Monotype included research and adaptation of historical typefaces, including the revival of the Bembo and Bell types. He pioneered the great expansion of the company's range of typefaces, and hugely influenced the field of typography to the present day. At Monotype, Morison obtained rights to typefaces by leading artists of the time including Bruce Rogers, Jan van Krimpen and Berthold Wolpe. Aesthetically, Morison disliked the excessive historicity of Victorian romantic fine printing, with its interest in reviving blackletter and the appearance of medieval manuscripts, but preferred a more restrained style of printing that nonetheless also rejected the harshly industrial appearance of the "batteries of bold, bad faces" of the nineteenth century.

In 1927, the British Monotype Corporation hired Beatrice Warde – quickly named the company's Publicity Manager – and has been credited with spreading Morison's typographic influences through her own writings. Morison and Warde helped edit Monotype's newsletter, the Monotype Recorder, which promoted Monotype equipment and provided tips for users, showcased examples of high-quality printing and included articles on printing history, several by Morison's collaborator Alfred F. Johnson, a curator at the British Museum. Through Daniel Berkeley Updike, the leading figure in American printing of the time with whom he carried an extensive correspondence, he became aware of an obscure late-eighteenth century type known as Bell in the archives of Sheffield type foundry Stephenson Blake, and arranged for Monotype to license and recreate it. While not all his projects at Monotype were successful and his position was insecure at the start of his tenure, his commission of Gill Sans and even more so Times New Roman both proved extremely financially successful for Monotype. Both remain among the most-used typefaces of all time.

Morison became friends with Brooke Crutchley, printer to the University of Cambridge, one of Monotype's best customers, and his archives went to Cambridge after his death. Late in life, for Crutchley he wrote the book A Tally of Types, an assessment of the typefaces created by Monotype that were used in Cambridge. Despite its limited scope and some oversights, it is considered one of the landmark books on twentieth-century printing.

As a writer for the Fleuron he was known for promoting the radical idea that italics in book printing were too disruptive to the flow of text, and should be phased out.{{cite book |url-status = bot: unknown

Morison wrote prolifically on the history of printing. Philip Gaskell however cautioned that "his books and papers were always stimulating, and frequently sound in their general conclusions, but at the same time he was inaccurate".

Times New Roman

Morison was also typographical consultant to The Times newspaper from 1929 to 1960; and in 1931, having criticised the paper for the poor quality of its printing, he was commissioned by the newspaper to produce a new, easy-to-read typeface for the publication. Times New Roman, the typeface which Morison developed with graphic artist Victor Lardent, was first used by the newspaper in 1932 and was issued commercially by Monotype in 1933.

He held the Sandars Readership in Bibliography at Cambridge in 1931 and lectured on "The English newspaper: some account of the physical development of the journals printed in London from 1622 down to the present day."

Morison edited the History of the Times from 1935 to 1952, and was editor of The Times Literary Supplement between 1945 and 1948.

Later career

Morison was Lyell Lecturer in Bibliography at the University of Oxford in 1956-1957 and lectured on "Aspects of Authority and Freedom in Relation to Greco–Latin Script, Inscription, and Type."

In 1960, Morison was elected a Royal Designer for Industry. He was a member of the editorial board of Encyclopædia Britannica from 1961 until his death in 1967. He was offered a knighthood in 1953 and the CBE in 1962, but declined both.

He was instrumental in development of the exhibition of the contribution printing had made to the enlargement of human knowledge: Printing and the Mind of Man. It coincided with the 1963 International Printing Machinery and Allied Trades Exhibition (IPEX).

Morison died in London on 11 October 1967.

Selected publications

• On Type Faces, Examples of the use of type for the printing of books: with an introductory essay & notes by Stanley Morison, The Medici Society of Seven, Grafton St, London, & The Fleuron, Westminster, 1923
• Four centuries of Fine Printing; Two Hundred and Seventy-two Examples of the Work of Presses Established Between 1465 and 1924, 1924
• Type Designs of the Past and Present, 1926
• English newspaper: Some account of the physical development of journals printed in London between 1622 & the present day, 1932
• First Principles of Typography, 1936
• A List of Type Specimens, with: Harry Carter, Ellic Howe, Alfred F. Johnson and Graham Pollard, 1942
• English Prayer Books, 1943; revised edition 1945; revised and enlarged edition 1949; digital reprint 2009
• A Tally of Types, 1953
• Calligraphy 1535–1885: A collection of seventy-two writing-books and specimens from the Italian, French, Low Countries and Spanish schools, 1962
• On Type Designs Past and Present: A Brief Introduction, 1962
• The Typographic Book, 1450–1935: A Study of Fine Typography Through Five Centuries, 1963
• Letter Forms, typographic and scriptorial: Two essays on their classification, history and bibliography, 1968
• Politics and Script, 1972
• Selected Essays on the History of Letter-Forms in Manuscript and Print, Vol. 1 & 2, 1980.

References

1. "Stanley Arthur Morison".
2. "Stanley Morison: Significant Historian (obituary)".
3. (1937). "Type Designs of the Past and Present, Part 3". PM.
4. (1937). "Type Designs of the Past and Present, Part 4". PM.
5. Allan Haley. (15 September 1992). "Typographic Milestones". John Wiley & Sons.
6. (1968). "Stanley Morison". Monotype Recorder.
7. (1946). "Notes on the Present State of British Book Typography". Graphis.
8. (2004). "A history of Cambridge University Press.". Cambridge University Press.
9. "Modern". Monotype.
10. "Lacunae".
11. (1991). "Innovative Industrial Design and Modern Public Culture: The Monotype Corporation, 1922-1932". Business History Conference.
12. "Fonts designed by Monotype Staff".
13. William Roger Louis. (1996). "Adventures with Britannia: Personalities, Politics, and Culture in Britain". I.B.Tauris.
14. Stanley Morison, Nicolas Barker, Macmillan, 1972
15. (January 1982). "Stanley Morison: Catholic and Man of Letters". The Heythrop Journal.
16. (October 2008). "The Guild of the Pope's Peace: A British Peace Movement in the First World War". Recusant History.
17. (1987). "Fanfares, Amazons and Narrow-Boats". Matrix.
18. Malcolm Yorke. (7 July 2000). "Eric Gill: Man of Flesh and Spirit". Tauris Parke Paperbacks.
19. Tom Burns. (1 March 1993). "The Use of Memory: Publishing and Further Pursuits". A&C Black.
20. Carter, H. G.. (2004). "Morison, Stanley Arthur (1889–1967)". Oxford University Press.
21. James Moran, ''Stanley Morison, His typographical achievement'', 1971, Lund Humphries London, SBN 85331 300 8
22. (24 April 2014). "Letter from van Krimpen to Morison". Monotype Archive.
23. McVarish, Emily. (2010). ""The Crystal Goblet": The Underpinnings of Typographic Convention". Design and Culture.
24. "Talbot Baines Reed, typefounder and sailor".
25. (1979). "Stanley Morison & DB Updike: Selected Correspondence". Moretus Press.
26. (2014). "Transitional Faces: The Lives & Work of Richard Austin, type-cutter, and Richard Turner Austin, wood-engraver". Poltroon Press.
27. Stanley Morison. (1 October 2009). "The English Newspaper, 1622-1932: An Account of the Physical Development of Journals Printed in London". Cambridge University Press.
28. Stanley Morison. (19 November 2009). "John Bell, 1745-1831: A Memoir". Cambridge University Press.
29. Sebastian Carter. (5 September 2003). "Obituary: Brooke Crutchley | Media". The Guardian.
30. (1973). "A Tally of Types".
31. (2001). "Review: A Tally of Types". Journal of the Printing History Society.
32. "Eric Gill's Perpetua Type". Fine Print.
33. "Changing the Times".
34. Morison, Stanley. (7 June 1973). "A Tally of Types". CUP Archive.
35. (1968). "Review: John Fell". The Library.
36. "Letters of Credit".
37. (9 September 2011). "Time and Times again". Monotype.
38. (19 August 2011). "It was never called Times Old Roman".
39. (3 October 1932). "Typolis article". Typolis.
40. Loxley, Simon. (2006). "Type: the secret history of letters". I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.
41. Morison, Stanley. 1932. ''The English Newspaper : Some Account of the Physical Development of Journals Printed in London between 1622 and the Present Day.'' [With Facsimile Illustrations]. Cambridge: U.P.
42. A View of the Oxford University Press. [[The Book Collector]] 20 (no.4) Winter 1971: 447-448.
43. Fleming, James. (2023). "Printing and the Mind of Man." ''The Book Collector'' 72 no.4 (winter): 619-623.
44. (1 March 1942). "A List of Type Specimens". Bibliographical Society.
45. (1 January 1973). "Two Books on Stanley Morison". Quaerendo.