Four by Ward Farnsworth

Classical English Rhetoric
Classical English Metaphor
The Practicing Stoic
Classical English Style

by Ward Farnsworth
David R. Godine, Publisher

Ward Farnsworth (dean of the University of Texas School of Law) seems to have read everything worth reading in the English literary canon – and quite a bit besides. These four books all take the same basic format: short chapters dedicated to linguistic forms or philosophical principles densely larded with quotations from literary sources. Each quotation had, naturally, to be paired with its source, which could have made for a very dreary page, a problem I solved by placing the citations in the outside margins. Overall, the books posed a number of challenges: to present a complex, fragmented text in an orderly fashion; to cover them in a non-literal fashion that conveyed something of the literary qualities within; and to keep them from looking like textbooks. The solution was to employ a traditional typographic treatment, but to allow a modest amount of variation from page to page. I hope the ghost of Jan Tschichold will forgive me for the wildly inconsistent bottom baselines.

Hardcover with jacket, 6 × 9"