A Tally of Types

The Tally of Types was first circulated in a privately printed edition in 1953, achieving a fame and influence wholly disproportionate to the comparatively small number of copies in existence. In 1973 Cambridge University Press published a version edited and expanded by Brooke Crutchley and others, making this classic of typographical history and practice available to a wider readership
it is this edition we have reprinted here. Stanley Morison provided the impetus and judgement behind the programme of typographical revival carried through by the Monotype Corporation in the 1920s and early 1930s. The Tally is an account, historical, critical and functional, of the types cut under Morison's direction during this period. It is an impressive performance: a fine example of what is now recognised as Morison's characteristic blend of erudition and insight. What started as no more than an attempt to record the facts developed, under his hand, into one of the major statements of typographical practice of its time.