Baskerville, with its well-considered design and elegant proportions is one of the world’s most widely used and influential typefaces. It was created by John Baskerville (1707–75) of Birmingham, an eighteenth-century typographer, printer and industrialist; an Enlightenment figure with a worldwide reputation who changed the course of type design. Whilst printing historians have lauded Baskerville for his contributions to the trade, he is more widely remembered for his unusual will, unconventional burial, and extraordinary post-mortem life. It is a story which has been retold over the course of 250 years by the local, national, and international press and which has contributed to the making of Baskerville’s erroneous reputation as an atheist. This talk surveys the evidence of Baskerville death and burial and reappraises the facts surrounding his post-mortem activities in order to correct the misapprehensions which surround Baskerville’s beliefs and to reassess him as a Deist rather than atheist.

Caroline Archer-Parré is Professor of Typography and Co-director of the Centre for Printing History & Culture, and Chair of both the Baskerville Society and Print Networks. With a specific interest in Baskerville and Birmingham’s printing past, she is Co-Investigator of the AHRC-funded project, ‘Small Performances: investigating the typographic punches of John Baskerville through heritage science and practice-based research’. With an interest in midland’s typographic history from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, Caroline has published widely, contributes to numerous journals, and writes regularly for the trade and academic press. She is also General Editor for the Printing History & Culture series, published by Peter Lang.