BOOK DESIGN

Anna Fábri: Golden Ages | Fábri Anna: Arany idők

Publisher: Kortárs Könyvkiadó, Budapest, Hungary | 2022​

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Cultural historian Anna Fábri has spent almost ten years researching the pedagogical practices of the Count Teleki family. The focus of her book is the childhood diary of Count László Teleki (1811-1861) and The educational advice of his father, József Teleki. She traces the links to ever-changing educational doctrines, ideas and places, and presents the educational institutions and methods of Pestalozzi and others, as well as Göttingen, the contemporary stronghold of Protestant university education. Unpublished letters, documents and reminiscences give the reader an insight into the religious culture of the Teleki family, their social life, reading, conversations and games, the family itself, the prematurely widowed mother and guardian, the much older brother, the first president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

The classic look of the book is a visual link to the theme of education. It follows the author's writing style, in which the scientist's rich historical knowledge takes the form of a seemingly light narrative. The book is therefore intentionally non-archaic in its choice of typeface and colour. It is serous, in that the main purpose of the modern layout is to aid readability, as the book is almost 400 pages of academic work. It is playful, for example, in its repeated use of salmon colour and in the intertextual placement of archival images and documents to reinforce the descriptive tone of the text.

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