Harry Carter

Harry Graham Carter (27 March 1901 – 10 March 1982) was an English typographer, translator and writer. He was a well-known historian of type. He was the father of type designer Matthew Carter. Biography Carter studied at the progressive Bedales School (where he was a friend of John Rothenstein), and at The Queen's College, Oxford "where he became competent in French, German, Spanish, and Russian". (He would later learn Arabic, and design a Hebrew font.) Though he was studying law, Carter became interested in typography and bought a printing press. His first work with type came in 1928 and 1929 as an apprentice at the Monotype Corporation. At this time he formed friendships with Jan van Krimpen, Stanley Morison, Francis Meynell, and Oliver and Herbert Simon (cousins of his school-friend, John Rothenstein). He became involved the Curwen Press, and after leaving the Monotype Corporation worked briefly at the Kynoch Press in Birmingham. In 1931 he and Herbert Simon published Printing Explained. From 1936 to 1938 he worked at the Nonesuch Press in London, as Meynell's book-designer. His son, Matthew Carter, was born in 1937. In 1937, Carter, Ellic Howe, Alfred F. Johnson, Stanley Morison and Graham Pollard started to produce a list of all known pre-1800 type specimens. The list was published in The Library in 1942. However, because of the war, many libraries on the European continent were not accessible anymore. In 1942 he translated Erasmus' In Praise of Folly into English.