Chiswick Press

C. Whittingham I gained notoriety for his popularly priced classics, but the Chiswick Press became very influential in English printing and typography under C. Whittingham II who, most notably, published some of the early designs of William Morris.

[1][2] The Chiswick Press deserves conspicuous credit for the reintroduction of quality printing into the trade in England when in 1844 it produced The Diary of Lady Willoughby.

The typeface Basle Roman was cut for the Chiswick Press in 1854 by William Howard and cast at his foundry in Great Queen Street.

William Calvert's The Wife's Manual (a book of religious verse), published in 1854; later editions followed in 1856 and 1861, both set in the same type which apparently had only one size, 10-11 pt and no italic.

In 1889 it was used by William Morris for his romance A Tale of the House of the Wolfings, and again for The Roots of the Mountains (dated 1890 but appeared the year before).