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True to Type: A Typographical Autobiography by Ruari McLeanReview by: Ingrid de VilliersLibraries & Culture, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Fall, 2003), pp. 423-424Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25549143 .
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423
1969 and 1974, single-volume sets with the original type were produced by Holland Press (London); and in 1978, Holland Press and Oak Knoll Press
copublished the set, also in the original eight-point type, as a single volume.
This new edition, copublished by Oak Knoll and the British Library, uses the
larger type of the Duschnes version and adds, for the first time, two indices: a sixty
six-page title index and a scant four-page subject and personal
name index. The
former is comprehensive and useful though not essential; between library union
catalogs and Internet used-book sites, it is simple to find an author's name from the
title of a work. The subject index, therefore, is potentially much more valuable. It is
a shame, then, that it is so brief. A note at the beginning of the index states that
"any such subject (Gutenberg, for example), which would have hundreds, if not
thousands, of references has not been included in the index unless as part of a title,
or as the main subject of the work" (3: 117). Though this is a reasonable consider
ation, the resulting index is too brief to be of great use. Even a cursory glance
through the book, with an accompanying check of the index, reveals numerous
topics that have not been indexed at all or that have been only partially indexed. An engaging introduction by Henry Morris, of Bird & Bull Press, provides a
concise history of the Bibliography. I have drawn on this useful essay, along with the original introduction, for details of its printing history. Also included is a facsimile of the original prospectus.
The decision to combine three volumes in one, though appealing at first thought, makes the Bibliography harder to use. At over a thousand pages in length, the result
ing volume is too large to handle easily, and the original pagination has been used, with the front matter inserted at the beginning of the first volume as (unnumbered) pages ii-xxi and the index tacked on at the end as pages 117-87 of the third vol ume. For ease of use, it would have been nice to have a
single set of page numbers.
A Bibliography of Printing, even after more than a
century, is still a valuable
work that every academic library and serious collector should own. However, those owning one of the earlier editions will not need to
buy this version.
Michael Levine-Clark, University of Denver
True to Type: A Typographical Autobiography. By Ruari McLean. New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll Press, 2000. 216 pp. $39.95. ISBN 0-907961-11-8.
If at the age of eighteen and a half Ruari McLean had indeed followed his dream of riding horses in South America, this book would never have come to
be. Instead, his autobiography gives
a vivid and personal account of his career
in typography. McLean's autobiography is perhaps much like the diaries he tells us he has kept since his youth. Full of drawings, letters, photographs, and
reproductions of book covers and designs and peopled with anecdotes of characters who touched his life, McLean's book is more than an
autobiography, it is a tribute to all who inspired him-whether through encouragement, friend
ship, collaboration, comedy, example or
rejection-and to everything that
instilled in him a love of words. It is at once a series of personal recollections, a memoir of his career, and an anecdotal history of the publishing world of London in the 1950s and 1960s.
The book begins with a note about Manticore, the typeface designed by John Hudson and used for this text. In his preface and postscript, McLean reflects on
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424 LScC/Book Reviews
what he sees as the irony of typography. A typographer's principal aim is to
design printed matter with art and skill in order to transfer the author's message
to the reader's brain. The process should occur quickly and easily. A typogra
pher might be said to fail when a reader notices the mechanism by which this transfer occurs; he succeeds when his work goes unnoticed. Ruari McLean's life
and his contributions to the field show that typography is not to be ignored but rather admired critically. Among his contributions are The Thames & Hudson
Manual of Typography, published in 1980 and still considered among the top ten books on typography, and/aw Tschichold: A Life in Typography, a biography of the renowned German typographer whom McLean first meets after finding
one
of Tschichold's typography booklets in his desk drawer at a printing firm in London and discovering that Tschichold was neither dead nor too aged to
be visited by a young, eager typographer. A list of other works by McLean is
included before the very convenient index.
In the twenty-one chapters of the book, readers can expect to delight in a
number of personal anecdotes, including that McLean's love of books arose due
to a tonsil infection that kept him regularly in bed from the age of four to twelve,
that he once found a tea towel bearing a typographical pattern he had designed for a book cover and hoped
to sue over copyrights, and that he married his wife
because she was beautiful and had thin ankles. His love of books is made abun
dantly clear when, in the same sentence, he beams with pride over the births of
his first published work and his first son. Readers will also be introduced to an array of colorful characters McLean
came to know throughout his career. The famous publisher Richard Blackwell,
who gives McLean his first opportunity to work at a press, makes an appear
ance; McLean's first mentor, the absent-minded Bernard Newdigate, drives
away in a car before realizing it is not his; MacLean's most faithful yet quirky
secretary, Fianach Lawry, miraculously becomes fertile after a car accident. Of
course, many prominent authors, artists, and businesspeople of the time appear
throughout the pages. McLean doesn't leave out his friends, family, or the office
dog, Slocum. Much of the chapter titled "Victorian Books," for example, is
devoted to a description of the many booksellers he encountered in his search
for nineteenth-century books.
Looking back on his life, McLean sums up his career: "My work had ranged
from letter headings for friends, and then companies, parish magazines, children's
books for Penguin, then the comics Eagle, Girl, Swift and Robin, to magazines like Picture Post and the New Scientist, and then a wide range of books (including the Bible) produced by Rainbird, McLean and other publishers" (198). Today,
Ruari McLean lives in Scotland, where he was born.
Ruari McLean's autobiography is informative, often funny, and an enjoyable
read. Those who are either familiar with McLean's most famous works or inter
ested in typography, graphic design, and printing in London in the 1950s and 1960s will find this book a delightful pleasure.
Ingrid de Villiers, University of Texas at Austin
A Bibliography of Texas Library History 1685-2000 and A Chronology of Texas Library History 1685-2000. Compiled and edited by Donald G. Davis Jr. Austin, Tex.: Eakin
Press, 2002. xx, 158 pp.; xv, 199 pp. $57.95 set. ISBN 1-57168-716-5, 1-57168-715-7.
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