Porson (typeface)

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Porson is a typeface in the Greek alphabet based on the handwriting of the English classicist Richard Porson. Porson, as his biograhper writes, "excelled, as all men know, in writing with neatness and beauty" and "wrote notes on the margins of books with such studied accuracy that they rivalled print".^[1] The face was based on Porson's transcription of the Medea;^[2] and Richard Austin was commissioned by the Cambridge University Press to cut it, from 1806 onwards.^[3] It was completed and used only after Porson's death in 1808, in the editions of plays of Euripides produced by Cambridge scholars.^[4] After its first appearance, it was soon copied by other founders, and was released by Monotype with some corrections in 1912.^[3] It has been described as "calm yet energetic",^[3] and used by the Oxford Classical Texts for over a century.^[3]

[edit] References

Bringhurst, Robert (2004). The Elements of Typographic Style. Point Roberts, WA: Hartley & Marks.
Dictionary of National Biography (1917). Vol. XVI. London: Oxford University Press.
Sandys, Sir John Edwin (1998[1903-1908]). A History of Classical Scholarship. Vol. II . Bristol: Thoemmes Press.
Watson, John Selby (1861). A Life of Richard Porson, M. A.. London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts.