The Universal Penman

I couldn't be happier with this. This shows Copper Plate Calligraphy at its best. It is a book of samples with several of them being whole letters in Copper Plate and showing us different wonderful letter forms and flurishes. This is the natural next step after working through a how to book on Calligraphy. I suggest _Mastering Copper Plate Calligraphy_ by Eleanor Winters and then this book for more letter forms, before moving to the next step which for most will be the Spencerian path or the Mondern Calligraphy path.I want to spend more time in Copper Plate so I will be working on letter forms and flurishes from this book, _The Univeral Penman_.

This Is a history lesson about the penman and women

Some might call this a "Coffee Table" book -- I use it as a reference book. Original author, George Bickham, assembled all the material from various writers and published the first edition in the early 1700's. Has been reprinted many times up to the current book. The Forward of the book was written in 1941 - copyright date of 2012. It is a shame that cursive handwriting is out of style and not even taught in school.

When I look at a book from this era, I find it most helpful to remember that teaching and learning have changed greatly over the years. We moderns expect to be led by the hand, with ruled lines, exercises, encouragement, and so forth. We are also accustomed to books and paper being affordable and readily availible.Think back to the era when these plates were engraved. The young scholar would have been red with fury had the price been inflated with hand holding of that sort. Having already learned one "hand, ie style of penmanship, the learner knew perfectly well how to draw lines for practice. Likely starting on cheap paper with pencil, then moving to more expensive paper with ink, they would have followed the well known maxim that heavy lines are down strokes, light lines are upstrokes, and practice was all.In addition, these plates contained an education in refined business correspondence and speech. Letters of Credit, Carpenters Bills, Commissions to Ship master, all served as a clerks education, giving the new clerk a portfolio to show. Maxims on modesty, Poetry ,pride, honesty, etc, gave the young clerk the confidence to mingle with his better off employers, and polished some of his rough spots.In a world before television, internet, or even free lending libraries, a book such as this was a goldmine In a striving mans access to a bit of upwards mobility in one of the few positions that allowed that. Clerks, once established, could travel, leaving their humble beginnings behind.I find it fascinatining in this context.Because I have already learned Spencerian Script, I am equipped to practice from this book. I began with tracing paper, moved on to isolating letters, and am now working my way through a particular alphabet. I feel learning one script at a time is best. I am not, and will never be an expert, but as a person interested in both history and handwriting, this book is amazing.

The Universal Penman is a beautiful book, and a must-see for anyone interested in the ornate writing styles that have long-since fallen out of fashion. The first few pages give a brief (but interesting) history about George Bickham and his engraved plates, and each page after that models a different writing style, usually in the form of a poem, a bill of exchange, or a document that there's no reason you need to know the content of but it sure is fun to see the perfect swirls and flourishes dancing around the page.Before this book arrived I thought "maybe I'll be able to learn some fancy old-fashioned writing!" Hahaha no. That would be like me buying a book with pictures of finished tables and thinking I would learn woodworking. The end result depicted is the result of a craft that is so refined and far outside my reality that I don't even know what to practice in order to begin practicing (and that's as someone who has done some decent calligraphy in the past). That said, the book itself is a joy to look at, and is still valuable as a way to enjoy a beautiful art form.

212 pages full of flourishing examples.

George Bickham's monumental work , both the artwork and calligraphy is stunning. It's full of writing samples from the classical period of round hand calligraphy. You can just admire the sheer beauty of the handwritten word. George Bickham the Elder (1684-1758) was the finest calligraphic engraver of his day. He was also an excellent penman, as 18 of these plates show, but he employed 25 leading writing masters to compose the bulk of this, his best known work, a collection of writing exemplars which helped to popularize the English Round Hand script in the 18th century.

Glad I ordered this edition from Dover. Oversized, high quality printing, and fast shipping.

The copy I received is published by Snowball publishing 2012, but it is actually one of the many Print-To-Order reprint books to be found on Amazon, with the barcode & "Printed by Amazon" inside the back cover. A largish soft paper-back (23cm High x 15 cm wide x 1.3cm thick).Flicking through the book it's very clear that the original edition was much larger! (more like the excellent Dover press reprint books - intact the cover with it's grey background looks suspiciously like they are copying the look of the Dover books) As a result you will need your spec's for a lot of the pages!The content is essentially just lots of examples of daily standard script calligraphy interspersed with ornate headings, & the odd illustration. At the back there are 2 pages of alphabets (5 to a page, so again tiny), & some examples of non-english script (greek, hebrew, etc.).There is no instruction on calligraphy, just examples of Bickham's work, prefaced by a 2 1/2 page introduction by Philip Hofer dated 1941.Like most script the body text tends to be a bit samey, so the most useful stuff here is probably the ornate twiddly calligraphy headers, but too much of the content is printed too small to be a particularly useful reference.So if you see it cheap enough it might be worth picking up, but you'd be better with a larger format edition.

The media could not be loaded.  The Universal Penman engraved by George Bickham is my wonderland. I often get so lost in the beauty of the flourished references this book contains! Amazing.

This is a large selection of engraved pieces issued by George Bickman, a master engraver, in the late 1730's. There are bills of lading, promisery notes etc but mostly edifying texts, written and engraved by the finest exponents of the age. It is not, as I hoped, much use in showing the format for correspondence in the C18th, as there are only a few samples of letters. However, it is an invaluable window on the mindset of the time. It is also useful for studying the handwriting styles that were common then.

Having seen many examples of Bickham's plates over the years I was eager to view this book in its entirety and opted for the B&N hardback version to sate my curiosity. Yet, immediately upon arrival, was somewhat disappointed to see that the cover art had been sublimated into the cover's boards, furthermore, upon a subject within which symmetry, proportion and balance are paramount, Bickham's cover illustration is dealt another blow by the binders with the art bleeding over the cover's edges. It's also worth pointing out that in this reprint's preface by Philip Hofer of the 1941 edition, a footnote indicates that the plates have been reduced in size, yet it's unclear whether that's for the '41 ed' or this 2012 ed'n or, for that matter, what the original sizes were. Nonetheless Bickham's masterpiece is all there within and is a glory. Incidentally, the vanishingly tiny hairline strokes which in reality are the hallmark of the master penmen of ages past will have to be imagined for modern printing does not appear able to reproduce them for reasons which are unclear to me, though likely a combination of paper, ink and economy. Having never seen an original Bickham plate I am given to wonder whether he managed to capture also the magic of the sublime hairlines of those he masterfully copied.

Its universal classic :)