The small shopkeeper, for instance, is still with us, and though the time has almost come wherein he will have no apparent place, nevertheless his survival is permanent; for nothing can stop small boys from selling one another marbles, and it is that personal dealing which is the root of all trading.

-An Essay on Typography, Eric Gill

There are, then, two world & these twain can never be one flesh. They are not complementary to one another; they are, in the liveliest sense of the words, mortal enemies. On the one hand is the world of mechanised industry claiming to be able to give happiness to men and all the delights of human life- provided we are content to have them in our spare time and do not demand such things in the work by which we earn our livings; a world regulated by the factory whistle and the mechanical time-keeper; a world wherein no man makes the whole of anything, wherein the product is standardised and the man simply a tool, a tooth on a wheel. On the other is the languishing by indestructible world of the small shopkeeper, the small workshop, the studio and the consulting room- a world in which the notion of spare time hardly exists, for the thing is hardly known and very little desired; a world wherein the work is the life & love accompanies it.

-Ibid.

I picked up a copy of An Essay on Typography while at The Strand this summer. I got perhaps a third of the way through it and then misplaced it during the move. Over the past few days of unpacking it surfaced again and I have been alternating it with Sanctuary on my bus ride.

Of Eric Gill’s most well known fonts, Gill Sans is not a font I’ve ever been particularly fond of (a personal prejudiced against san serifs, though I’ve been trying to come around and appreciate them) and I haven’t spent enough time with Perpetua to have an opinion. An Essay on Typography is set in Joanna, a font I had never encountered before. I’ve become quite enamored with Joanna and with her companion italic especially. Gill chose to set the text ragged right rather than justified as a protest against ‘the tyrannical insistence upon equal lengths of lines.’ Not to be colloquial, but the ragged right setting has kind of blown my mind.  As a final endearing typographic touch, he uses the pilcrow to mark his paragraphs rather than line breaks or indentation (and he includes a liberal sprinkling of ampersands).

Gill is continually brilliant and amusing throughout the book, if meandering. It’s less An Essay on Typography and more An Essay on Whatever Eric Gill Should Like to Talk About, and Mostly He Should Like to Talk About Typography. I don’t mind one bit. It’s interesting reading whatever way you cut it. Throughout the book there persists a theme of “two worlds,” that of mechanized industry and that of the humanist craft. Gill’s treatment of this subject sings to me. I’ve marked the pages up with dark underlining and exclamatory stamps of “YES!” Reading this book has, surprisingly, given me a grounded hope in the persistence of the humanness of our existence.

Additionally, I had no idea that Eric Gill had such a dark personal life, but every time I’ve mentioned that I’m reading the book, someone will say something like “Eric Gill! He was a nudist!” or “Eric Gill! He molested his children!” or “Eric Gill! He fucked his dog!” There’s apparently a biography by Fiona MacCarthy that rakes up all his dirt that I’d dearly love to read. Who knew typography could be so perverse?