The designing of a new printing type usually takes many months because the designer needs time for reflection and revision. That was not Frederic Goudy’s way. In 1927 alone he had six different typefaces in hand, and a few years later he produced the letter drawings, patterns, and matrices for an urgent commission in just one week.
That extraordinary rate of production, with its predictable effect on the quality of his designs, was one reason for the criticisms that were expressed about him in his lifetime. But the criticism did not prevail against his great popularity and reputation. Joseph Blumenthal wrote in The Printed Book in America that Goudy “was the only typographic designer whose fame reached beyond professional circles, sparked no doubt by his reputation as the ‘mostest.’” Goudy lectured widely and frequently, and he clearly enjoyed the lionizing and the honors that accumulated. A New Yorker profile in 1933 was titled “Goudy: Giorifier of the Alphabet.” In speeches and articles on letter design and printing he expounded the virtues of traditional style and reticence in the designer—though his need to make his hundred or so typefaces distinguishable from one another meant that as to reticence Goudy the designer took little notice of Goudy the writer.
D.J.R. Bruckner, a writer and editor for The New York Times Book Review, provides an interesting account of Goudy’s life, which began in 1865 in Bloomington, Illinois. He describes Goudy’s various jobs in and around Chicago, until he found