Epigraphy

2000 — Light shelfwear to book. Dustjacket has minor shelfwear and rubbing. ; Sandpiper Reprint of 1972 edition. ; The Lyell lectures; 361 pages; The central argument of Stanley Morison's work is that the development of script (inscriptional, calligraphic or typographical) has been the result of changes in religious or political environment, of friction between church and state, and of the schism between Eastern and Western Christendom. Morison begins with an example of alphabetic forms on a 6th century BC gravestone from Melos and proceeds through commentary on a notable collection of more than 180 illustrated specimens, to trace the career of the Graeco-Roman alphabet up to its use in newspaper typefaces of the 1950s. He also seeks to show that the most widely used printers' typefaces of the twentieth century owe more to their Greek than to their Roman antecedents.