Shelf Life

According to Peter Stallybrass, an obscure typeface called civilité offers us a way of thinking about both the history of printing and the development of the bureaucratic nation-state in Western Europe. Peter, who is Annenberg Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania, spoke with Jill Gage, the Newberry’s curator of printing history, about why civilité was designed to simulate handwriting, why it was the chosen typeface to print “junk mail” from King James I, and why it eventually faded into obscurity. (Intro music: "Two Types of Awakenings" by Nheap)