Celebrated penmanship?
October 9, 2006 9:18 AM Subscribe
We discussed improving penmanship once or twice. I'd like to know who is/was known for their distinctive hand. Links to letters or notebooks would be wonderful.
Damn, I just responded to that thread not realizing it was 8 months old. /smack's forehead.
There are a few fonts out there for some distinctive hands. Pushkin, for example.
Personally, I've always been a fan of illuminated manuscripts.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:50 AM on October 9, 2006
There are a few fonts out there for some distinctive hands. Pushkin, for example.
Personally, I've always been a fan of illuminated manuscripts.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:50 AM on October 9, 2006
Oh yeah, and any of the Founding Fathers. Those boys had some might purty handwritin'.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:52 AM on October 9, 2006 [1 favorite]
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 9:52 AM on October 9, 2006 [1 favorite]
Best answer: If you can get access to a well-stocked public or university library, there's a two-volume set of facsimile manuscripts of famous (English-language) authors, though for the life of me I can't remember the title.
I tend to like the functional handwriting of 17th- and 18th-century writers, which show more distinctiveness and lack most of the forced curlicues of Victorian hands. There are some nice examples here -- Robert Burns is much fun, as is William Shenstone, and I'm impressed by this font based on Isaac Newton's hand (scroll down).
posted by holgate at 10:22 AM on October 9, 2006 [2 favorites]
I tend to like the functional handwriting of 17th- and 18th-century writers, which show more distinctiveness and lack most of the forced curlicues of Victorian hands. There are some nice examples here -- Robert Burns is much fun, as is William Shenstone, and I'm impressed by this font based on Isaac Newton's hand (scroll down).
posted by holgate at 10:22 AM on October 9, 2006 [2 favorites]
Response by poster: Pushkin is great. I can't seem to find anything but the font. :(
I'm interested in more than just fonts because there's so much style missing from a handwriting font—although the fonts do lead me in the right direction.
The History Place has Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in his hand [page 1, page 2]. Take the word "that" for instance. He begins the second T cross at the H. Fun stuff.
posted by pedantic at 10:29 AM on October 9, 2006
I'm interested in more than just fonts because there's so much style missing from a handwriting font—although the fonts do lead me in the right direction.
The History Place has Lincoln's Gettysburg Address in his hand [page 1, page 2]. Take the word "that" for instance. He begins the second T cross at the H. Fun stuff.
posted by pedantic at 10:29 AM on October 9, 2006
Also: some gorgeous examples of italic writing on this much-linked site.
posted by holgate at 10:30 AM on October 9, 2006
posted by holgate at 10:30 AM on October 9, 2006
Best answer: The late computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra had distinctive handwriting. Some of it is in evidence at the archive of his manuscripts.
posted by tew at 4:17 PM on October 9, 2006
posted by tew at 4:17 PM on October 9, 2006
The very cool type "foundry" p22.com offers fonts based on the notebooks and renderings of, among others, Gauguin, Cezanne, Wright, and Leonardo (including a backwards version!).
posted by rob511 at 8:00 PM on October 9, 2006
posted by rob511 at 8:00 PM on October 9, 2006
Charles Manson's handwriting is absolutely terrible. A friend wrote a brief letter to him in jail and he wrote back about 11 pages of unreadable gibberish.
posted by evariste at 8:50 PM on October 9, 2006
posted by evariste at 8:50 PM on October 9, 2006
Best answer: The book you want is English Handwriting, published way back in the 1920s by a strange fogeyish organisation called the Society for Pure English. (It's in two volumes: vol. 1 edited by Roger Fry and E.A. Lowe, 1926; vol. 2 edited by Robert Bridges and Alfred Fairbank, 1927.) It's long out of print, but you may be able to find a copy in a library or pick up a cheap secondhand copy on Abebooks. It's well worth reading, as it's one of the very few handwriting manuals to include examples of good everyday handwriting, as opposed to fine writing by professional calligraphers. I wish someone would do an updated version and put it online.
The 'two-volume set of facsimile manuscripts' that holgate is thinking of is P.J. Croft (ed.), Autograph Poetry in the English Language: Facsimiles of Original Manuscripts from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century (1973).
A.E. Housman had beautiful handwriting, clear and distinctive, but unfortunately I can't find it reproduced anywhere on the internet, except for a rather small image on this page. Virginia Woolf also wrote a very elegant hand, which you can see here (a page from the autograph manuscript of Mrs Dalloway -- just look at the fluency of it, written at speed with only a few corrections; amazing). The latter image comes from the British Library's online gallery of English literature, which you might enjoy browsing.
If you want to work on improving your own handwriting, then you might be interested in the Edward Johnston Foundation. Johnston's book Writing & Illuminating & Lettering, published one hundred years ago this year, is generally considered to mark the beginning of the modern calligraphic revival.
posted by verstegan at 2:18 AM on October 10, 2006
The 'two-volume set of facsimile manuscripts' that holgate is thinking of is P.J. Croft (ed.), Autograph Poetry in the English Language: Facsimiles of Original Manuscripts from the Fourteenth to the Twentieth Century (1973).
A.E. Housman had beautiful handwriting, clear and distinctive, but unfortunately I can't find it reproduced anywhere on the internet, except for a rather small image on this page. Virginia Woolf also wrote a very elegant hand, which you can see here (a page from the autograph manuscript of Mrs Dalloway -- just look at the fluency of it, written at speed with only a few corrections; amazing). The latter image comes from the British Library's online gallery of English literature, which you might enjoy browsing.
If you want to work on improving your own handwriting, then you might be interested in the Edward Johnston Foundation. Johnston's book Writing & Illuminating & Lettering, published one hundred years ago this year, is generally considered to mark the beginning of the modern calligraphic revival.
posted by verstegan at 2:18 AM on October 10, 2006
Steve Jobs mentioned the calligraphy class he took at Reed with Lloyd Reynolds as influential in his career/life/design of the Mac.
posted by whimsicalnymph at 6:27 PM on October 22, 2006
posted by whimsicalnymph at 6:27 PM on October 22, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by mcstayinskool at 9:40 AM on October 9, 2006