John Baskerville was born 1706 at Sion Hill, Wolverley, Worcester, England. By 1723, he had become a writing master and skilled engraver of gravestones. In 1740 he started a very successful varnishing business in Burmingham, and within a decade he became a very wealthy man. Around 1750, he began experimenting with paper making, ink manufacturing, type founding, and printing, and around 1754 Baskerville produced his first typeface. (The punches were cut by John Handy who worked for him for 28 years, until Baskerville's death.) Three years later, in 1757, Baskerville published his first work, the Virgil, which was followed by some fifty other classics. In 1758, Baskerville became a printer to Cambridge University, where on July 4, 1763 he published his masterpiece, a folio Bible, which was printed using his own typeface, ink and paper. The use of heated copper cylinders to give a crisp finish to the printed pages indicates the unusual effort he would make to achieve excellence in printing. He died January 8, 1775. From the viewpoint of type development, Baskerville's typeface is classified as "transitional", positioned between the typefaces of William Caslon (Old style); and Giambattista Bodoni and Firman Didot (Modern).

The title page from Baskerville's Virgil's Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis, printed in Birmingham in 1757.

Baskerville designed type with great delicacy and visual eloquence. In spite of being surrounded by the ostentatious onamental style of his generation, Baskerville chose simplicity and quiet refinement both in type design and in his printing. His tastefully composed pages of type have the elegant appeal of superior design. As a designer, Baskerville's guiding principle is clarity and he permits nothing on his pages to interfere with the message. As a personal challenge, he wanted to improve the great typeface of William Caslon. Baskerville had no formal training as a printer or punch-cutter so he crossed the technically safe boundries and existing conventions of his peers without any hesitation and experimented to obtain the desired results. Although an excellent designer, he did not improve on the Caslon face, but it is historically accurate to say that he did create a new masterpiece in type design named Baskerville.

Sample Baskerville inside page from Virgil's Bucolica, Georgica et Aeneis, printed in Birmingham in 1757.