A question often rises about book designing - should the overall design of the content, and the choice of typeface in particular, reflect the historical context of the text? Robert Bringhurst, among others, dealt with this matter in "The Elements of Typographic Style", suggesting that a relation between form and content is preferable. Other designers, like Jost Hochuli, seem less cathegorical. I'd like to add a little contribution by suggesting you to take a look at how John Morgan and Gareth Jones managed to treat aesthetically Oscar Wilde's "The Picture Of Dorian Gray", in the Four Corner Books edition. I haven't seen the book phisically, but the reasons behind the designers' choice are very interesting: "For this new edition of the book, artist Gareth Jones re-imagines the story as a costume drama set in 1970s Paris, in a large format edition that returns the book to its origins in a magazine". The fonts used are ITC Benguiat for the headline and ITC Garamond for the body text, both related to Seventies magazine style. An insightful review of the book has been published in a recent issue of "Grafik" magazine - a very useful reading for understading the designers' choices.
