Perpetua was released with characters for the Greek alphabet and a matching set of titling capitals for headings. Perpetua is commonly used for covers and headings and also sometimes for body text and has been particularly popular in fine book printing. Perpetua was intended as a crisp, contemporary design that did not follow any specific historic model, with a structure influenced by Gill's experience of carving lettering for monuments and memorials.
Perpetua was commissioned at the request of Stanley Morison, an influential historian of printing and adviser to Monotype around 1925, when Gill's reputation as a leading artist-craftsman was high. Perpetua is a serif typeface that was designed by the English sculptor and stonemason Eric Gill for the British Monotype Corporation.
