⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 2–3 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Please allow 2–3 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

Good lettering is drawn, not typed — and Thomas Wood Stevens' 1916 manual Lettering remains one of the clearest vintage guides to drawing it well. This antique lettering manual teaches alphabet construction from the ground up: the proportions of Roman capitals, the logic of lower-case forms, spacing that breathes, and the hand-drawn discipline that separates a letterer from someone who merely writes.

Stevens approaches lettering as an artist's craft with rules worth learning. His pages build letters stroke by stroke, showing how weight, width, and spacing create readable, handsome words — lessons that apply whether the letters end up on a show card, a book cover, an illuminated page, or a painted sign. The 1916 vantage point matters: this is hand lettering taught before phototype and computers, when every letterform came off a pen or brush.

Modern hand-lettering artists, sign painters, and graphic designers will find Stevens' instruction refreshingly direct. The construction methods transfer straight to brush lettering, chalk work, and digital lettering alike — proportion is proportion, whatever the tool. Students working through his alphabets build the eye every professional letterer needs.

Collectors of vintage lettering manuals prize Stevens' book for its era and its clarity. Whether you draw letters for clients or study the history of the alphabet in America, Lettering (1916) belongs in your reference library.

Details: 6×9" paperback, black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1916 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1916 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1916 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.