This book is concerned with the eighteenth-century typographer, printer, industrialist and Enlightenment figure, John Baskerville (1707-75). Baskerville was a Birmingham inventor, entrepreneur and artist with a worldwide reputation who made eighteenth-century Birmingham a city without typographic equal, by changing the course of type design. Baskerville not only designed one of the world's most historically important typefaces, he also experimented with casting and setting type, improved the construction of the printing-press, developed a new kind of paper and refined the quality of printing inks. His typographic experiments put him ahead of his time, had an international impact and did much to enhance the printing and publishing industries of his day. Yet despite his importance, fame and influence many aspects of Baskerville's work and life remain unexplored and his contribution to the arts, industry, culture and society of the Enlightenment are largely unrecognized. Moreover, recent scholarly research in archaeology, art and design, history, literary studies and typography, is leading to a fundamental reassessment of many aspects of Baskerville's life and impact, including his birthplace, his work as an industrialist, the networks which sustained him and the reception of his printing in Britain and overseas. The last major, but inadequate publication of Baskerville dates from 1975. Now, forty years on, the time is ripe for a new book. This interdisciplinary approach provides an original contribution to printing history, eighteenth-century studies and the dissemination of ideas.

This book presents the content of a 1623 catalogue of manuscripts in Worcester Cathedral library created by Patrick Young (1584-1652).

Presenting a full and precise description of all legal ties between landlord and tenant in early modern England, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After re-examines one of the key issues in English agrarian history - the question of the legal security of the copyholder. Comparing historical records and literary evidence, Agrarian Problems in the Sixteenth Century and After reprints much of the important 1969 edition of the book, and asserts that: * customary tenants enjoyed legal security in and before the sixteenth century * enclosures proceeded legally, without oppression, and in much the same form (whether ratified in parliament or not) throughout the whole period * depopulation was less extensive than sometimes supposed and that such depopulation as there was often proved economically profitable and not without social benefit. When first published in 1969, this fascinating book represented a unique viewpoint that affected, and in some cases reversed, much accepted opinion. As a landmark work in a highly important area of English agrarian history, it still has considerable impact today.