Little Girls Are Wiser Than Men

Published October 25, 2026

Contributed by Isaco Type

Little Girls Are Wiser Than Men, published by Tara Books in 2021, is a letterpress book adapting a short story by Leo Tolstoy, illustrated by Lebanese artist and lithographer Hassan Zahreddine through linocut prints. The edition is limited to 2,000 copies.

Designer Sanjana Vamadevan set the text in Monarcha, a serif typeface published by Isaco Type. The typographic layout draws from 19th-century book design conventions — story and illustrations on facing pages, with ornamental details, spacing, and leading evoking the period in which Tolstoy's tale is set.

The book's production follows an intricate path between the digital and the handmade. Zahreddine's linocut illustrations were inked, proof-printed, and converted into digital images. Vamadevan then designed the layout digitally — before the files were transferred to film and etched into metal letterpress plates mounted on wooden blocks. Printing was carried out on a 1965 Heidelberg press.

The journey from digital type file to physical impression on paper connects Monarcha to a tradition of printing that predates digital tools by centuries — a fitting correspondence for a typeface whose design balances classical structure with contemporary sensibility.

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