This afternoon I finished setting the type for the first sentence of Anne of Green Gables in Bodoni 12 point. I took a photo of the type in the chase and then digitally mirror-imaged it to allow me to proof it; here’s what that looks like:

I’m still thinking about the ends of each line: as you can see I threw in a couple of hyphenated word breaks to keep the right edge relatively uniform; I don’t think I’ve got it in me to do a full justification, but it would probably be a good exercise to go through.

Once I’d sorted my type drawer, the setting went much more quickly because I could be relatively confident that pulling a given letter out of the drawer would result in that letter being in my hand (before sorting it was a 50-50 chance it would be the wrong letter). The exercise also drilled the California job case layout into my head, so I now find myself almost being able to reach for the right letter without looking at the case layout diagram.

The other lesson learned: my case of Bodoni doesn’t have enough lower case d’s to set much more than this: I only have a half-dozen left over.

Next step: trying printing it.