Item #55674 [READING FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED – A BRAILLE ALTERNATIVE] Two volumes issued by the Moon Society and the National Institute for the Blind, London: Moon Christmas Annual 1938 [WITH:] The Gospel According to St. Mark. Moon Society, National Institute for the Blind.

Moon Society; National Institute for the Blind.

[READING FOR THE VISUALLY IMPAIRED – A BRAILLE ALTERNATIVE] Two volumes issued by the Moon Society and the National Institute for the Blind, London: Moon Christmas Annual 1938 [WITH:] The Gospel According to St. Mark.

Moon Christmas Annual 1938 (title taken from spine label): London: Moon Society (a Branch of the National Institute for the Blind), 1938. Large oblong folio (28.5 × 34.5 cm). Original blind brown stiff card boards with printed spine label; 85 pp. In lieu of a title page, a leaf with transcribed raised alphabet is present: “A Simplified System of Embossed Reading for the Use of the Blind Invented by William Moon, L.L.D, &c.”. Dedication signature to inside front wrapper and an inscription sticker “This book is a gift from the directors of the Moon Society, a Branch of the National Institute for the Blind.” Boards lightly scuffed and stained, toned due to stock. Small chip to “alphabet” page not affecting text. Still about very good. WITH: [The Gospel According to] St. Mark (title taken from spine label): London: Moon Society (a Branch of the National Institute for the Blind), [1938?]. Large oblong folio (28.5 × 34.5 cm). Original blind brown stiff card boards with printed spine label; 91 pp. In lieu of a title page, a leaf with transcribed raised alphabet is present: “A Simplified System of Embossed Reading for the Use of the Blind Invented by William Moon, L.L.D, &c.”. Sticker to inside front wrapper “Provided by the United States Government through the Library of Congress”. Boards lightly scuffed and stained, spine starting. Internally chipped and toned due to stock. Still about very good. Item #55674

Two volumes embossed in Moon type, a form of raised type for the visually impaired based on the Latin alphabet, developed in 1843–1845 by Dr. William Moon (1818–1894). The only non-Braille system that survives to this day, Moon type is most popular among the elderly and readers who went blind later in life, as was the case with Moon himself. Born in Kent, Moon learned to read by sight first, before losing his vision completely by the age of 21. With the loss of vision, he also gave up his plans to join the clergy, becoming instead a teacher for the blind and a philanthropist. As a teacher, Moon focused on the development of the new raised type, based on the simplified Latin characters which were easier to remember for those who knew letters by sight, but were less spatially economical than the Braille system. The first Moon type book appeared in 1847. To promote the new system, Moon founded and funded the Moon Society in Brighton (Sussex), publishing primarily devotional books during his lifetime. His ambitious project to release the entirety of the Bible in monthly instalments was completed in 1858, printed in 60 volumes. The present volume of the Gospel According to St. Mark appears to be a later edition of the original instalment. The volume is likely to be contemporaneous with the 1938 Christmas annual offered alongside it, with the library rubber-stamps in the rear dating from 1939 and 1942. The two volumes also have similar binding and labelling, differing only in the notation of the numerals on the title leaf. “When Dr. Moon died in 1894, books in his type were printed in 419 languages and dialects” (See: Gabriel Farell, The Story of Blindness, p. 103). The geographic breadth of the use of the Moon type followed British colonial interests in India and China.

In the United States, the Moon system competed with and superseded the initially more popular embossed Boston Line Type (developed in the 1830s and used extensively at the Perkins School for the Blind in Massachusetts), which was similarly based on the Latin alphabet. Moon first promoted his system with a traveling tour he undertook in the US with his daughter, Adelaide Moon in 1880s. His son, the ophthalmologist Robert Moon emigrated to Philadelphia in the same period, and continued to promote his father’s system by publishing the Moon magazine starting in 1905, and helping to manage the Moon Society until his death 1914. The National Institute for the Blind would take over the Moon Society thereafter. J. Robert Atkinson would undertake the first printing of Moon books in the United States in 1933. The founder of the Braille Institute of America in Los Angeles, Atkinson saw the project as an alternative for the few blind readers who preferred Moon type to Braille, likely noting the need of immigrants to California from Asia. Despite this undertaking, the present volumes were apparently imported to the US from London.

As of May 2026, KVK, OCLC show one copy of the Gospel According to St. Mark in North America, and no copies of the 1938 Christmas Annual, with two copies of the 1937 Christmas Annual held in North America.