BASKERVILLE, JOHN English printer, was born at Wolverley in Worcestershire. About 1726 he became a writing master at Birmingham. and he seems to have had a talent for calligraphy and for cutting inscriptions in stone. About the year 175o he began to make experiments in type-founding, pro ducing types much superior in distinctness and elegance to any that had hitherto been employed. He set up a printing-house, and in 1757 published his first work, a Virgil in royal quarto, followed, in 1758, by his famous edition of Milton. In that year he was appointed printer to the University of Cambridge, and undertook editions of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer. He pub lished a Horace in 1762, a second edition appearing in 1770 in quarto; and its success encouraged Baskerville to publish a series of quarto editions of Latin authors, which included Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, Lucretius, Terence, Sallust and Florus. These books are admirable specimens of typography; and Baskerville is deservedly ranked among the foremost of those who have ad vanced the art of printing. His contemporaries asserted that his books owed more to the quality of the paper and ink than to the type itself, but the difficulty in obtaining specimens from the Baskerville Press shows the estimation in which they are now held.