Bulgakov and Perpetua

Since two of our new books have just gone into binding: Diaboliada and Fatalne jaja by Mikhail Bulgakov, it is worth returning once again to the Perpetua font, which was used to set them.

The fonts were cut by Eric Gill in 1929. However, work on them – at the initiative of Stanley Morison – began in 1925. A year later, in 1930, in the pages of the seventh and last volume of The Fleurion , The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity was published, a sample set for the new font, decorated with Gill's woodcuts.

In general, this issue of Stanley Morison's magazine was extraordinary in every respect. In addition to Passion of Perpetua and Felicity, it included sample books of the then new and still popular fonts Centaur, Monotype Bembo and Lutetia, a text by Beatrice Warde devoted to Gill's work ( Sculptors of Letters ) and Stanley Morison's famous essay First Principles of Typographty .

Below: The first and last pages of Passion of Perpetua and Felicity .