Book conservator Mimi Meyer ransacked the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin during the early 1990s, stealing over 300 rare books, including the library's copy of Bodoni's Manuale. It was a story of book theft that sparked Lester's interest in Bodoni. The Manuale is regarded as one of the greatest achievements of typography, a dazzling compendium of typefaces and designs. Two volumes are filled with Roman characters, capital letters, alphabets in Greek, Hebrew and Arabic (among others), exotic characters, and pages of symbols, ornaments, and ciphers. Bodoni labored for forty years on this side project, which was ultimately published by his wife Margherita five years after his death. Hugely ambitious, Bodoni devoted his spare time to completing what many collectors today consider his magnum opus, the Manuale tipografico, a specimen book filled with magnificent examples of type. On Sundays during the winter, the city hosts a midday concert and afterwards Prosecco is served alongside tiny little pieces of pizza.
You can go to a concert every night of the week. "You can walk around it, there is so much art and so much music. Even today Parma is a delicious little city. It was a hub of activity, welcoming visitors like Napoleon and the Mozarts père et fils. He worked so hard, and left little time for other things!" (Bodoni didn't wed until the ripe old age of 51.) As a result, Lester's book is also a biography of eighteenth-century Parma. But since Bodoni was a total perfectionist, and spent most of his time at work, "he's difficult to write about because his life actually isn't deeply interesting. They don't take on the whole man," she said during a conversation earlier this fall. "Other biographies indulge in hero-worshipping. This is the first substantial English-language biography of the typographer. Lester spent almost eight years traveling to the charming Italian city of Parma, where Bodoni spent most of his career. Notable contemporary examples of Bodoni font include the masthead of Vanity Fair magazine, the brand logo for Hilton hotels, and even grunge-rock band Nirvana. Bodoni ushered in the era of modern typefaces with his use of clean lines, creating an elegant, geometrical look. He is now the subject of a book entitled Giambattista Bodoni: His Life and His World, by Valerie Lester (David R. (Now anyone with a word processor can adjust fonts to his heart's content.) Italian printer and type designer Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) created fonts that continue to influence how we read today. Typography, the art and science of arranging type to make words legible, was long the province of a select group of printers and designers. Reproduced with permission from David Godine.
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