Daniel Berkeley Updike

Daniel Berkeley Updike (February 24, 1860 – December 28,

Updike's parents were both of English and Dutch-German descent. His mother, who held more traditional views of life, strongly influenced the young Updike. His father's family, the Updikes, were originally from Wesel in present-day Germany and settled New Amsterdam before 1640. His patrilineal great-great-great-great-grandfather, Gysbert Opdyck, came from Wesel to New Amsterdam and Connecticut, and married a daughter of Richard Smith who was one of the earliest and most prominent settlers of Rhode Island. For over 150 years, the seat of the Smith-Updike family was "Smith's Castle" on Narragansett Bay at Wickford, Rhode Island, but his grandfather, the Honorable Wilkins Updike (1784-1867), was forced to sell the homestead in 1812, thereafter practicing in Kingstown, Rhode Island.

Updike's work as an errand boy for Houghton, Mifflin and Company introduced him to the publishing trade, and he rapidly took an interest in the process of book-making. Mature for his age, the young man was socially accepted at the firm. Updike was responsible daily for carrying proofs from the printer's offices on Park Street on Boston's Beacon Hill to the Riverside Press overlooking the Charles River in Cambridge. Traveling by horse-car, Updike made the most of the time: he studied the proofs he was delivering and imagined the changes that he himself would make. At the Press, he would wait for the corrected prints and quickly developed an interest in print-making.

The Merrymount Press

In 1893 Updike opened his own studio, designing type fonts; in 1896 he founded a printing company, the Merrymount Press (named in honor of Mount Wollaston—the original Merry Mount—an early settlement south of Boston). One the first works issued with the Merrymount Press imprint was "In the Old Days, A Fragment," a remembrance of her youth by Updike's mother. Updike was well-known and respected as a printer in the twentieth century; he was also known for his rejection of the philosophy of William Morris. Initially he followed the style of William Morris and the Kelmscott Press but soon turned towards historical printing styles of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.

Updike is viewed as one of the finest representatives of the Arts and Crafts movement in American book arts, influenced by William Morris. The Merrymount Press was founded "to do common work uncommonly well." Updike was renowned as a liturgical printer for the Episcopal Church, but also undertook general jobbing and ephemeral work. John Bianchi became a partner in the press in 1915.

Updike began to acquire his own fonts. In 1896 he commissioned the font designer Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue to create the Merrymount font to be used for an Episcopal altar book. In 1904 Herbert Horne designed Montallegro, and the noted graphic artist and print designer Rudolph Ruzicka (1883–1978) also produced designs for the press. In 1904, Updike purchased the Caslon face; other types included Scotch Romans, Janson, Mountjoye, and Oxford. Merrymount was the first American firm to use the now widely familiar font, Times New Roman font.

The majority of the Merrymount Press archives are conserved at the Boston Athenaeum.

Published works

Updike was greatly interested in the history of printing types and in 1922 published Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use. An extensively revised second edition was published in 1937. He was involved in the Anglo-American 'Typographical Renaissance' of the time, together with Frederic Goudy, Stanley Morison, Bruce Rogers, and Theodore Low De Vinne.

Excerpt, Printing Types: Their History, Forms and Use "Ligatured letters became more common and more varied, and from this kind of writing the black letter ultimately is derived".

In 1924 Updike published a collection of his writings on book making, "In the Day's Work."

The Well-Made Book: Essays & Lectures by Daniel Berkeley Updike, collected and edited by William S. Peterson, was published in 2002 and contains many previously unpublished essays and extensive illustrations. C.

Honors and memberships

Daniel Berkeley Updike was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1904.

Daniel Berkeley Updike was awarded American Library Association Honorary Membership in 1933.