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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