Old-style and revival serif fonts for books
Digital revivals of Renaissance, baroque and later book types, and new designs in the old-style tradition, most with italics, for novels, essays and fine printing.
Once upon a time
The typefaces most readers think of as bookish descend from a few centuries of metal type, roughly from Venice in the 1470s to the English and French foundries of the 1700s. Old-style romans have a slanted stress, as if written with a broad pen, modest contrast between thick and thin, and bracketed serifs. Later transitional designs stand more upright and sharpen the contrast. Both make a calm gray page, which is why novels are still set in them.
A revival is a designer's reading of a historical source, and revivals of the same type can differ a great deal. Some reproduce the irregular, slightly rough outline of letters printed from worn metal on damp paper; others clean everything up. The rough ones have great charm at 14 points and above. For a long book at 10 or 11 points, a cleaner revival with a sturdier hairline is easier on the eye.
Look for the equipment a book needs: a true italic with its own letterforms, old-style figures that sit among lowercase like words, and ideally small capitals and ligatures. The notes below give the source each revival names in its record.
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EB Garamond
A revival of Claude Garamont's sixteenth-century roman, taken from the 1592 Berner specimen, with figures that rise and fall like lowercase; five weights with italics.
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Libre Baskerville
Follows a 1941 foundry cut of the transitional English model but raises the x-height, opens the counters and lowers the contrast for screens; four weights with italics.
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Crimson Text
Designed for setting books in the Garamond-inspired old-style manner, with slanted stress and bracketed serifs; three weights with italics.
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Crimson Pro
A text serif in the Garalde tradition for long texts, merged from two earlier versions, with open, fairly wide letters; eight weights with italics.
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Libre Caslon Text
Made for web body copy and modeled on how 1950s lettering artists drew the style, not on eighteenth-century specimens; Regular, Italic and Bold.
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Baskervville
Revives a French interpretation of the English transitional model, sold from 1815, with old-style figures; four weights with italics.
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Cardo
An old-style face with slanted stress and long ascenders, drawn for scholarly typesetting and carrying a very large character set; Regular, Italic and Bold.
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Sorts Mill Goudy
A revival of an old-style design by Frederic Goudy, with slanted stress, softly bracketed serifs and old-style figures; roman and italic, without a bold.
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Alegreya
A calligraphic text serif first intended for literature, with wedge-shaped serifs and old-style figures; six weights from Regular to Black with italics.
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IM Fell English
A revival of one of the seventeenth-century Fell Types, roman and italic, that keeps the irregular outlines of old printing.
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Lusitana
Modeled on the type of the 1572 first edition of The Lusiads and meant for long texts at small sizes; Regular and Bold, without italics.
Samples load a basic Latin subset of each family. Every family here carries an open license; its page states the terms and offers the original files.
Questions about old-style and revival serif fonts for books
What are old-style figures?
Numerals with ascenders and descenders, like lowercase letters, so that a date or a page number does not stand out in a line of text. Several families here include them.
Can I typeset and sell a book with these fonts?
Yes. Open licenses allow commercial publishing in print and as e-books, with the font embedded in the file.
Which revival should I pick for body text?
For long text at small sizes choose a cleaner design in several weights. Keep the rough-edged facsimile revivals for titles, epigraphs and short passages.