Hello! My grandfather is fixing a damaged spine of a relatively old Dutch fairytale book entitled ‘Sprookjes van Grimm’. I don’t know the year (I can ask), but it also says Elsevier on the spine.

Anyway, I am doing a design for the new spine, and want it to be as authentic as possible. I can trace the lettering, but some parts are hard to interpret. It would be ideal if anyone knows what typeface was used—or if it’s lettering, what typeface will come closest to it.

In the image below you can see a rough tracing I did of the Grimm part in an attempt to identify the font using font identification websites online, but no luck there.

You’re halfway there already. I would just continue with the vectorization. 
I just wouldn’t give it different stroke endings. The broad-nip pen would produce the broad stroke endings in all the lowercase letters but the pointed ones in the G.

Le Griffe from Letraset might be a good place to start, just condense about 75%.

You'll find it here: https://www.myfonts.com/search/Le+Griffe/

Thanks, Ralf. I realized the same and gave the G a diagonal terminal cut. I also normalized the letters to the baseline and x-height a bit, and made sure the thin strokes are more consistent.

And thanks Gecko, but I’m afraid Le Griffe is too different. It seems Ralf might be right and I should focus my effort on simply tracing the other letters as well.

Martin, it looks to me that it has been a hand-lettering job, that was reproduced and turned into a brass for the blocking of the binding case. As it is an Elsevier publication, it could have been a Helmut Salden job. Anyway, what you've traced should indeed work out.