A note by William Morris on his aims in founding the Kelmscott Press

The title of this exhibit, “The Claim to Beauty,” comes from from the beginning of the posthumously published essay for which this book is named. In the essay, Morris explains that he has founded Kelmscott Press to produce books that are both pleasurable to the eye and easy to read, taking inspiration from fifteenth century incunabula. Morris decided that his books must use handmade paper, custom types, a precise layout of text on the page, illustrations made specifically for the content of the book, etc. Necessarily, the claim to beauty was a difficult endeavor, intensive in time and labor.

Below, the frontispiece of the book is pictured. Also shown is an example of the Troy type, one of Morris’s three original fonts, displayed alongside two never-used woodcut initials. This is the only example of the Troy type found in Special Collections. Troy is an example of Gothic type, but Morris aimed to make it more readable than the average Gothic type. Troy is named for William Caxton’s Historyes of Troye and inspired by the typography of German printers Peter Schöffer, Günther Zainer, and Anthony Koburger.