Weatherland by Alexandra Harris

Alexandra Harris’ collection of British nature-writing was published in an interesting mixture of fonts that refers to the past without quite reusing it.

The hardback edition (September 2015) uses P22 Cézanne Pro for the title, and the rest of the cover in caps and small capitals of English Grotesque, an industrial-style sans based on the many pieces of sans-serif lettering around the UK similar to (or preceding?) Johnston and Gill but not a direct copy (here’s a good example – sign painters in this style seem to have had a lot of fun with ampersands). The body text and a quote on the cover is in Carat, an Ungerish sharpened old-style from Dieter Hofrichter.

The same fonts are used throughout the book – rather neatly the numbers referring to endnotes are also English Grotesque, making them noticeably more solid than the text and easy to spot. It’s a well laid-out book, although perhaps Carat gets a little fragile when used for the blockquotes in a smaller size. Cézanne also recurs in the text – it’s the font used for ornaments. The paperback (July 2016) uses a title in Perpetua (quite appropriately, as both Harris and Gill are from Sussex) and small text in Brandon Grotesque. The cover of the Australian edition uses English Grotesque and Carat.

I think the logo of publisher Thames & Hudson is based on Bliss but with the capitals and ascenders cropped a little.