Giambattista Bodoni

Typographic manual, 1788

Despite the title, "Manual", it is actually a sample of characters, divided into two parts: the first contains 100 round Latin characters and 50 italics, the second is preceded by a title page with the title: Serie de'caratteri greci di Giambatista Bodoni and features 28 tiny Greek characters. The characters are not presented with the traditional alphabetic series but through texts that describe various Italian cities; leaf 71 is missing, never made (the paper found in the Lugano Library, now untraceable, and relating to the city of Trieste, turned out to be a fake), as evidenced by the numbering 70/72. The second part, on the Greek alphabet, is also attested as a separate edition printed in 150 copies.