Wilson Greek is a polytonic Greek

Greek diacritics

Greek orthography has used a variety of diacritics starting in the Hellenistic period. The complex polytonic orthography notates Ancient Greek phonology...

 typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 designed in 1995 by Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter is a type designer. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Carter's career in type design has witnessed the transition from physical metal type to digital type...

, notable for its large inventory of ligatures. It is based on a typeface designed in 1756 by Alexander Wilson for an edition of Homer

Homer

In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...

's Iliad

Iliad

The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...

and Odyssey

Odyssey

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...

published that same year in Glasgow by Robert

Robert Foulis (printer)

Robert Foulis was a Scottish printer and publisher.-Biography:Robert Foulis was born the son of a maltman. He was apprenticed to a barber, but was encouraged to become a publisher by Francis Hutcheson who was impressed by his ability...

 and Andrew Foulis. Wilson's typeface was innovative in its rejection of the normative Greek typeface design of the time, which was heavily influenced by Claude Garamond

Claude Garamond

Claude Garamond was a French publisher from Paris. He was one of the leading type designers of his time, and is credited with the introduction of the apostrophe, the accent and the cedilla to the French language. Several contemporary typefaces, including those currently known as Garamond, Granjon,...

's Grecs du roi

Grecs du roi

Les grecs du roi are a celebrated Greek typeface designed by Claude Garamond in 1541 and containing a very large number of ligatures.The grecs du roi were ordered by Robert Estienne on behalf of King Francis I of France. The design was based on the handwriting of the Cretan copyist Angelo Vergecio...

(1541).

External links

• Wilson Greek typographic specimen