James Mosley

James Mosley (18 April 1935 – 25 August 2025) was a British librarian, preservationist and historian specialising in the history of printing, type and lettering.

Mosley was from 1958 to 2000 Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library in the City of London, where he curated and worked to expand the museum's large collection of printing and lettering materials and books. This collection greatly expanded with the close of the metal type era, which saw many companies and printing shops supply St Bride's with their equipment and archives. He became a visiting lecturer and professor at the University of Reading in 1964, and was a founding member of the British Printing Historical Society in that year, as well as the first editor of its journal. Mosley received the Individual Award of the American Printing History Association in 2003 and the Gold Medal of the Bibliographical Society in 2017.

He is credited with authoring Lorem Ipsum in 1966, per request of Letraset to create dummy text for graphic design.

Background Mosley was born in Driffield in 1935 and grew up in Twickenham in the south-west London suburbs, where he became interested in printing, using a "small Adana press." During his time at university he worked with Eric Gill's brother Evan on sorting material for an exhibition on his work by Monotype, a hot metal typesetting machine company with which Gill often collaborated.

Mosley's wife was food historian and book designer Gillian Riley, whom he met at Cambridge; she predeceased him in 2024. Mosley died on 25 August 2025, at the age of 90.

Career After a brief period working at the type foundry Stevens Shanks, one of the last remaining in London,

Mosley wrote many articles and books on the history of printing. Some of his best-known articles are 'English Vernacular', on British signpainting and lettering traditions from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, 'The Nymph and the Grot', on the early development of sans-serif letters before they became adopted by printers, which was later republished as a book, and 'Trajan Revived', on the Roman-style lettering revivals of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries. He collaborated with historians on other projects, including a printed edition of the decorated alphabets of Louis Pouchée's type foundry, a study of the early printing of works by David Hume and on the forgeries of Harry Buxton Forman and Thomas James Wise. He was a specialist on the career of Vincent Figgins, an early nineteenth century typefounder, who founded the type foundry that later became part of Stevens Shanks.

The St Bride Library, off Fleet Street in the City of London, was set up as a technical library to give trade education to printers at a time when the area was a centre of book and newspaper printing and publishing. From his experience working at Stevens Shanks, Mosley felt that they did not appreciate the value of the historic materials they owned, dating back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, He also advised on designing fonts based on historic typefaces and lettering, and was cited as an influence by font designers such as Paul Barnes.

After retirement from St. Bride Mosley continued to write, research and lecture. He also advised on historically appropriate lettering for Bellerby & Co, Tate Britain and HMS Victory.

Mosley was influential on younger designers through giving lectures on the history of letterforms as a guest lecturer at the University of Reading and the Rare Book School. His lectures for Reading in 2020-1 were recorded and, following his death, the University of Reading and his estate agreed to make them available publicly.