We have already seen examples of the mad surrealism of type specimens from the 1800s. Sometimes, however, the mood is more satire than surrealism. Here are some examples of both from a specimen book issued by Farmer, Little & Co. in 1867.

In 1867, there was still a fair amount of bitterness when the subject of British-outfitted Confederate privateers came up.

This one, in the most florid nineteenth-century marketing language, is actually talking about the type itself, a “rimmed gothic.”