Not far from Italian Old Style.

Pretty close.
Thanks.

It has some of William Morris's Golden Type
in it too. There's also Scriptorium's version.

Also close.
Thanks!

P22's Vale Roman has a similar feel, I think.

- Mike Yanega

Nice, Mike. I've been looking for something with that rounded right leg on the 'h'. Seems like I've seen a font simmilar, including that 'h', before, but I cannot find it now.

This is a Linotype face from the 1920s called Benedictine. I don't think it has been digitized.

Wow! So it is. I have a Linotype catalog from the 30's and it is shown in there. You're dead on, good eye Mark!

- Mike Yanega

Thanks--I spent way too much time digging that up, but it looked so familiar that I had to know what it was.

Mark Simonson

Can you post a reasonable quality scan of that page? (Linotype 1920 catalogue)
I would love to see it.

António

Here's the lighter weight:

The font dates back to 1915 and is credited to Joseph E. Hill and Edward E. Bartlett. There was also a bolder weight and full character sets can be seen in Mac McGrew's "American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century".

"... retains the hand-wrought character of the original, but without freakishness ..."

From 1920. I love it.

Thanks, Mark, for the time spent on this ID and the image posting. I really like the typefaces. I suppose the Linotype heritage precludes digitization by non-Linotype folk like, well, yourself, eh?

I'm not that crazy about it. It may very well be faithful to the Plato de Benedictus source material, but it has a lot of design problems. The narrow lowercase "e" and the weird "h" keep jumping out at me. I think it's telling that it faded into obscurity.

nothing is beyond repair :)

here's a nice, up-close sample (it looks the same by my quick glance):
“Keats' Hyperion”
notice the considerable amount of width the accented ‘e’ gains.

Information on a new Benedictine revival in progress can be found in this topic.