I came across a monograph on the determination of stellar parallaxes from 1911, and I happened to be favorably impressed by the type in which it was set, shown in this brief extract:
The flamboyant serifs on the upper-case F and L visible in this image leave no doubt about the identity of the typeface; I first went to an old Lanston Monotype specimen, found that it resembled the style 21E, and then looked that up to get the name.
This - along with Binny Old Style, 31E in Lanston Monotype, which is even better - seem to be good answers to the question of what to use if one were sent back to a time when Times Roman did not yet exist, and one wanted a type with similar characteristics of readability.
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