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Kennerley Old Style is a serif typeface designed by Frederic Goudy. Kennerley is an "old-style" serif design, loosely influenced by Italian and Dutch printing traditions of the Renaissance and early modern period. It was named for New York publisher Mitchell Kennerley, who advanced Goudy money to complete the design. While Goudy had already designed 18 other typefaces, it was one of Goudy's most successful early designs in his own style. The regular or roman style was designed in 1911, the italic in 1918; bold styles followed in 1924.
Goudy was a fine art printer and later a prolific typeface designer. He designed Kennerley out of dissatisfaction with the Caslon typefaces then in use in fine art printing; he felt these had an uneven colour on the page due to the thickness of the capital letters being much greater than that of the lower case.
Goudy described the design as very loosely based on the 'Fell Types', a set of type in the Dutch style collected by Bishop John Fell of Oxford for the Oxford University Press, although he conceded that "comparison of my type with the Fell letter will disclose little more than an identity of spirit" and Walter Tracy found the claim of influence implausible. It has also been compared in some details, notably the tilted understroke on the 'e', to the type of late 15th century Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson by Walter Tracy and others; American Type Founders' historian Henry Bullen somewhat cruelly described it as "a spoilt Jenson". The italic is somewhat florid, with swashes on some letters.
Initially cast privately in metal type, Kennerley was later made available on sale and for Monotype's hot metal typesetting system. It has also been digitised several times.