What are the most important/influential/outstanding/beautiful bound works in British Typography?
(Consider, perhaps, Caslon, Baskerville, Gill, Johnston, Morison, Mosley, Harling, McLean, Spencer, Fletcher, Poynor and journals such as The Fleuron, Monotype Recorder, Penrose Annual, Typographica, Baseline, Octavo and Eye. Sorry if I omitted anything obvious.)
I have always found the Kelmscott Chaucer to be very beautiful.
A novel, The Diary of Lady Willoughby, published in 1844. It was the first revival of Caslon, and I believe the first revival of any type. Updike called it "the chief typographic event of the mid-nineteenth century." Perhaps an exaggeration, as Updike was so biased in favor of Caslon. However, it was well known, and helped, I believe, lead to the revival of old style types generally. So it was influential. It is quite a handsome book, but I don't think it would make the top of the list for its design, but rather for the revival of Caslon, and Old Style type generally.
Captured from commoncrawl.org on 19 Apr 2015. original URL