Updike, Daniel Berkeley

Updike, Daniel Berkeley, 1860-1941, American printer and historian of typography, b. Providence, R.I. At the Merrymount Press, which he founded in 1893 in Boston, his stated purpose was "to do common work well." Here, the excellence of his printing, influenced by William Morris, inspired and instructed other printers. At Harvard he taught the first college course in the United States on the history of type and the practice of printing. In his books he added the care and scope of the scholar to the knowledge of a master printer. Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use (1922, 2d ed. 1937) is the standard work on the subject and a basic book for all interested in the graphic arts. Updike's other works include In the Day's Work (1924) and Some Aspects of Printing (1941).

Daniel Berkeley Updike (14 February 1860—29 December 1941) was an American printer and historian of typography.

Updike was born at Providence, Rhode Island. In 1880 he joined the publishers Houghton, Mifflin & Company, of Boston as an errand boy. He worked for the firm's Riverside Press and trained as a printer but soon moved to typographic design. He set up on his own in 1893, and renamed his enterprise the Merrymount Press in 1896.

Initially he followed the style of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press but soon turned towards the historical printing of the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He began to acquire fonts of his own, including some specially cut for him — Montalegro and Merrymount. He made his name as a liturgical printer for the Episcopal Church, but also undertook general jobbing and ephemeral work. John Bianchi became a partner in the press in 1915.

Updike was greatly interested in the history of printing types, and in 1922 published Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use. An extensively revised second edition was published in 1937. He was involved in the Anglo-American 'Typographical Renaissance' of the time, together with Frederic Goudy, Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers and Theodore Low De Vinne.

See also

• List of AIGA medalists

DBU was born in 1860, not 1880.

References

• David McKitterick, ed., Stanley Morison and D. B. Updike: Selected Correspondence 1990, ISBN 0-85967-589-0, Introduction at pp ix-xxxiv.