OT: Font identification help?

I need to identify a font for work and I know from previous discussions that many here are very knowledgeable about such things.

I’m going to try to post a picture, but have historically had very little success so forgive me if this takes me a couple of attempts.

The font was intended to be Victorian, but may not be, so additionally I was hoping someone here might have a good suggestion of a better Victorian font?

Gosh! First time success!
Thank you to anyone who can help

Upload your image to myfonts.com and check their suggestions

I believe what you have is Adobe Jenson. As for Victorian fonts, this page has some recommendations: https://pixelsmithstudios.com/fonts-reviews/victorian-era-fonts/.

Your best bet is to look at a few actual Victorian books. In my experience, some Victorian fonts are slightly narrower in relation to their height than modern ones. Another common feature is the overall point size which is often smaller than you would expect in a modern book of similar dimensions. I wouldn't like to have to read these by candlelight!

This article gives a good historical background and is helpful for getting an overview of the different types of typeface and thus figuring out exactly what kind of style it is you are looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vox-ATypI_classification. It's not quite clear what is meant by Victorian; the typeface in the image appears to be a 20th century interpretation of a face whose origins were in the 15th century.

Have you had any success? I did a search on WhatTheFont and it looks a lot like Cloister Regular:
https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/cloister/urw-t-regular/

>8 woodstock8786: ...it looks a lot like Cloister Regular

Except for the upper tips of 'M' and 'l' if you look closely. I believe >5 AMindForeverVoyaging: has nailed it.

Thank you all!
That’s marvellous detective work, I knew this was a good place to ask.

I am slightly puzzled however, as these would have been printed out in the late 90s/early 2000s and i’m certain no one here would have had any adobe products. I wonder if there would have been a version in Word or Word Perfect etc?

When i say Victorian, i mean just that - this was someone’s best attempt at it, they didn’t know it was inaccurate. I’d like to use an actual Victorian font for further examples, so if anyone had any recommendations i’d be really grateful (just a regular book font, all of the online suggestions seem to be for the fancy advertising-style ornate ones). Whilst i have plenty of victorian books, none of them seem to name their fonts.

>10 Petrichory:

A suggestion. The Folio Society published the Asa Briggs Victorian trilogy with a Victorian style of cover design, and set it in Bulmer. They were clearly aiming to give the books a distinctly Victorian air, and thought this late-18C font did that. Along the same lines, many of the FS Victorian Explorers books are set in Baskerville, which is older still, but which the FS clearly thought had the right look. I think the Bulmer works better.

I have consulted AF Johnson's edition of Talbot Baines Reed's A history of the old English letter foundries, and this seems to confirm my impression that very few faces date from the C19, in fact between the C18 giants like Caslon, Baskerville and Martin (who did Bulmer) and the C20 revival in typography. Things may have been different in America, but I don't have access to Updike at present to check that.

>10 Petrichory: Adobe Jenson is based on a typeface design that originally dates to the 15th century. Several typeface designers have since created their own faces based (more or less closely) on Jenson's work, so it is possible you found some text based on one of those other variants. Alternatively, if you know the document was produced by computer, it most likely is Adobe Jenson. According to Wikipedia, Adobe's version of Jenson's design dates to 1996 so it could have been installed on a compute in the period you mentioned.

Regarding Victorian typefaces, a classic choice would be something like Baskerville. The design of Baserville actually predates the Victorian era a little, but it was in widespread use at the time and, I think, has a certain Victorian aesthetic sensibility. Baskerville is an English face. If you wanted something more continental, you could consider Didot (French), Bodoni (Italian), or Walbaum (German). For an American face of the period, consider Century.

Edit: Beaten by >11 affle:. As >11 affle: says, it's hard to find faces that were actually designed in the 19th century since they were busy repurposing classic faces (and the Victorian period was a bit early for the likes of William Morris, Eric Gill and Bruce Rogers, who would reinvigorate the art of type design).

>1 Petrichory: Thanks for your helpful sharing, I also found many fonts at: schriftarten instagram zum kopieren hope it will be useful to you

Baskerville