Alexander Lawson is the author of several books, and Melbert B. Cary, Jr., Professor Emeritus at the Rochester Institute of Technology. The Compositor as Artist, Craftsman, and Tradesman is a distillation of his years of research into the history of typesetting. In it he looks at the compositor as a person, from the introduction of movable type in the fifteenth century until it succumbed to the advance of mechanization in the twentieth.

Professor Lawson’s style is informal and entertaining as he reviews the attitudes, working practices, and difficulties of the average comp. He also includes anecdotes about some better-known typestickers and chronicles the inevitable move toward typesetting machines. Today’s dedicated band of hand typesetters will savor this nostalgic visit with other practitioners of the craft; those familiar with typefaces only in their digital form will get a glimpse of the heritage which underlies today’s bitmaps and outlines.

The Compositor as Artist, Craftsman, and Tradesman, by Alexander Lawson. Wood engravings by Joseph Sanders. 6 3/8 x 9 3/4, (iv) + 36 pages, 1990. Handset in Monotype Bulmer. The edition consists of 300 numbered copies printed on Rives paper, and 33 copies printed on damped Canterbury handmade paper signed by the author and printer. The Rives copies are case bound in cloth; they are available for $40 plus $2 shipping. The Canterbury copies are hand bound in quarter leather, but are sold out.