I like your topic although your take on it is wildly variant from my experience. I am a long-time fan of the Knopf capsule descriptions, although I first noticed fonts referenced in Penguin paperbacks in the 1970s. I'm currently reading a book (The Waste Land, A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis, published by Norton) which uses an appealing, somewhat retro font and I can't figure out which one it is despite trying several "what is this font?" sites online. I get multiple answers. For me knowing the font is part of the flavor of the text, an ingredient in the reading experience. Always has been.
I don't know if it helps, but the font used in the original 1922 publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was typeset in Caslon, a classic serif typeface commonly used in literary works of that era. While Hollis’s biography is a modern work, it’s possible that Norton selected a traditional serif font to evoke the period's aesthetic ... [per ChatGPT]
I like your topic although your take on it is wildly variant from my experience. I am a long-time fan of the Knopf capsule descriptions, although I first noticed fonts referenced in Penguin paperbacks in the 1970s. I'm currently reading a book (The Waste Land, A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis, published by Norton) which uses an appealing, somewhat retro font and I can't figure out which one it is despite trying several "what is this font?" sites online. I get multiple answers. For me knowing the font is part of the flavor of the text, an ingredient in the reading experience. Always has been.
I don't know if it helps, but the font used in the original 1922 publication of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land was typeset in Caslon, a classic serif typeface commonly used in literary works of that era. While Hollis’s biography is a modern work, it’s possible that Norton selected a traditional serif font to evoke the period's aesthetic ... [per ChatGPT]
Good guess! I don’t think it’s Caslon but it does evoke that font.
I don’t always write, but when I do it’s with filleted serifs.
Yes, it does sound like a sommelier or "emmymade." Good to laugh out loud.
For a photo essay I did, on the stretch of time between the Global Financial Crisis and the Pandemic:
"The font is a digital facsimile of Underwood Champion, a typewriter
beloved by journalists in the middle of the 20th century. This font is
meant to invoke a different but also bygone era of travel. Besides, I
like it."
https://www.davidawestbrook.com/vivid-fragile-global.html