The Monotype Recorder

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The Monotype Recorder

The Monotype Recorder was a trade magazine published by the Monotype Corporation. It was published for about 70 years from 1902 – it almost ceased publication during World War Two. Beatrice Warde was a long-standing editor.

Over 60 issues are available here in PDF format. We are greatly indebted to John Cornelisse for scanning in his personal collection, and making them available here on Metal Type. If you can fill some of the gaps in this collection please get in touch.

Use this search box to search our Monotype Recorder collection:

Volume 21 No. 189

Content Summary: Da Vinci’s Roman Capitals, The Work of the Pelican Press, Half-tone and Electro Plate Mounting, Initial Letters by Fred W Goudy.

Volume 27 No. 223

Content Summary: Charles Nicholas Cochin; Progress in Graphical Arts; Gleanings from Trade Journals; A specimen of Cochin Roman and Italic.

Volume 27 No. 224

Content Summary: The French National Printing Office; Close versus wide spacing; Inserting rules in tables.

Volume 28 No. 228

Content Summary: Tendencies in book printing; The Oxford University Press; Modern fine book printing – a review.

Volume 28 No. 229

Content Summary: How Monotype stands up to long runs; Reaching maturity; Printing and the printer of the future; A remarkable Monotype production.

Volume 28 No. 231

Content Summary: The Selling of Printing; A folder that made 2,500 per cent dividend; This edition set entirely in Bodoni.

Volume 28 No. 232

Content Summary: A conspectus of printing; Our new sports field; A private press with a private type foundry.

Volume 28 No. 233

Content Summary: Talking in Print; The Monotype composing room; The modern Press advertisement.


Volume 29 No. 234

Content Summary: A musician at the keyboard; Letter-spacing and unit-adding in Monotype composition; Pictures of the Monotype.

Volume 29 No. 235

Content Summary: William Maxwell – Printer of Books; The next President; The Printing Trades Unions and their Industrial Interests.

Volume 29 No. 236

Content Summary: Craftsmanship; Efficiency in the Monotype room; J W Printer discovers a publicity asset; Technical queries on Monotype operation.

Volume 29 No. 237

Content Summary: The Fifty best printed books; The serrated mould eliminates rising spaces; Our guests from America; Mr Punch and the Monotype.

Volume 29 No. 238

Content Summary: Sonnet for a printers’ specimen book; Public Printer Carter of Washington; The Oxford University Press – a remarkable exhibition.

Volume 30 No. 239

Content Summary: Keep posted with direct mail; Putting the shop on parade before the customer; Problems of the letter-head.

Volume 30 No. 240

Content Summary: Typography: A statement of policy; Towards a Nomenclature of letter forms.

Volume 30 No. 241

Content Summary: The development of the point unit of type measurement; Technical queries; The printer stationer.

Volume 30 No. 242

Content Summary: Old-face types in the Victorian age; Technical queries; A Russian Baskerville.

Volume 31 No. 243

Content Summary: The Monotype – from infancy to maturity, 30 years of Monotype Recorder; set in Bembo.

Volume 31 No. 244

Content Summary: For the glory of the craft; Respect for letters; The Monotype at Olympia; Falstaff specimen.

Volume 31 No. 245

Content Summary: Charles Knights on the local printer as a propagandist; Plantin super-sizes; The printer’s library.

Volume 31 No. 246

Content Summary: Further towards a nomenclature; How was this copy set?

Volume 31 No. 248

Content Summary: Obselete printing should be scrapped; Some years ago I set down the setting-stick; Monotype attachments.

Volume 32 No. 1

Content Summary: On the choice of typefaces; The advantages of printing from type; A comparison of various Monotype book faces.

Volume 32 No. 2

Content Summary: A sketch of the origin and growth of the printing craft in Yorkshire; Some typographic questions; Signor Silvio Massini – 30 years.

Volume 32 No. 3

Content Summary: A printer considers the book; Livening the type book; Type Metal; A letter from Mr Eric Gill.

Volume 33 No. 1

Content Summary: Aspects of periodical typography; Operators Diplomas – an announcement; Large sizes for small spaces.

Volume 33 No. 2

Content Summary: Prometheus in the printing office; Typography of the menu; Top 50 books of 1933.

Volume 33 No. 3

Content Summary: An article on the printed catalogue; Remarks on advertising conventions.

Volume 33 No. 4

Content Summary: My Shakespeare; Hints on tabular composition; Monotype Plantin – a specimen.

Volume 34 No. 1

Content Summary: Books at Burlington House; Back Along – Memoirs of a Comp; A new Monotype mould.

Volume 34 No. 2

Content Summary: Need school books be dismal, repellent? Recent good book production; The leading attachment is real news.

Volume 35 No. 1

Content Summary: The changing newspaper; Body faces – interesting comparisons; House-set ads, vexed problem nearing solution.

Volume 35 No. 2

Content Summary: Book special; Penguin Books now standardised to Monotype Imprint; Justifying overset lines.

Volume 35 No. 3

Content Summary: Pictures of modernity in type composition; New ways with type Book 2; Technical queries.

Volume 35 No. 4

Content Summary: A note on William Caslon; A specimen of Monotype Albertus; -ise or -ize Garfield Howe sums up.

Volume 36 No. 1

Content Summary: The organisation of a Monotype machine department; Maintenance of temperature of metal and moulds.

Volume 36 No. 2

Content Summary: Large textbooks; Sixpennies; The code book; A book of our own (tabular composition); Privately commissioned books.

Volume 36 No. 3

Content Summary: Forty historic years and what they brought about in the composing room; Printing The Times; A memorable family party.

Volume 36 No. 4

Content Summary: Monotype Bembo; Monotype Van Dyck 203; Monotype Bodoni; Monotype Bell; Monotype Centaur; Monotype Perpetua.

Volume 37 No. 2

Content Summary: Typographic problems of the illustrated book; How paper alters the face; Copy fitting; Specimens of two new book faces – Emerson and Times Wide.

Volume 37 No. 3

Content Summary: Monotype machines at Earls Court; Looking up the train; Combined spacing for caster attendants.

Volume 38 No. 1

Content Summary: Monotype machines in the limelight; The Birmingham conference of operators; Quadding charts; Preparing a railway timetable.

Volume 38 No. 2

Content Summary: 150th Anniversary of the French Revolution; Many happy centenaries; Technicians corner.

Volume 39 No. 1

Content Summary: 50th anniversary edition; Illustrated account of the pioneer days of Monotype composing machines; Alphabets of Ehrhardt.

Volume 39 No. 2

Content Summary: 50 years of type-cutting, specimen books and type sheets.

Volume 39 No. 3

Content Summary: Technical number with an illustrated summary of post-war improvements.

Volume 39 No. 4

Content Summary: Special number of Typographical Transformations as exemplified in a before and after collection of recent books, periodicals and general printing.

Volume 39 – Special

Content Summary: The fifth centennial of the invention of typography, the art of printing with moveable types.

Volume 40 No. 1

Content Summary: Monotype machines in the making. Showing a first selection of photographs recently taken at the Monotype works at Salfords, Surrey.

Volume 40 No. 2

Content Summary: The recrudescence of the small printer. Will Carter describes and illustrates his work at the Rampant Lions Press.

Volume 40 No. 3

Content Summary: We resume our tour of the works to see Monotype matrices and moulds in the making.

Volume 40 No. 4

Content Summary: Setting Mathematics, with a glossary of mathematical terms and nomenclature of signs by Arthur Phillips; Together with a note on the system of 4-line mathematical setting by the Monotype Corporation.

Volume 41 No. 1

Content Summary: The Typecasters; An illustrated history of type-casting by Ellic Howe.

Volume 41 No. 2

Content Summary: Typography for hospitality by the British Transport Commission.

Volume 41 No. 3

Content Summary: Commemorating the exhibition held at Monotype House of lettering and type designs by Eric Gill.

Volume 41 No. 4

Content Summary: The completion of the Monotype Walbaum size range; Walbaum’s early years in Goslar and Weimar; Print – a voice of the church.

Volume 42 No. 1

Content Summary: A grammar of type ornament; A new inscription for the printing school.

Volume 42 No. 2

Content Summary: Special issue dedicated to the users of Monophoto Filmsetters.

Volume 42 No. 3

Content Summary: Augmenting the Roman alphabet; Progress in PAA – with examples from experimental editions in Pitman’s augmented alphabet.

Volume 42 No. 4

Content Summary: Languages of the world that can be set on Monotype machines.

Volume 43 No. 1

Content Summary: Precision in map making.

Volume 43 No. 3

Content Summary: Stanley Morison 1889-1967.

Volume 43 No. 4

Content Summary: The Innovators; A review of the progress of Pictorial Machinery Ltd, 1919-1969.

Monotype fan? Contact others worldwide via the Metal Type Forum: Monotype Chat or the Super Caster Club.

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