Besley* is a free slab-serif font designed and maintained by Owen Earl, founder of indestructible type*. It is inspired by Clarendon, a popular font designed by Robert Besley.
While Clarendon has a rich history spanning over a century, it does have some limitations in terms of adaptability. That’s why Owen Earl took inspiration from Clarendon to create a new typeface that not only maintains excellent readability at reduced sizes but also includes an italic variant, resulting in a “modern classic” that that works well on both screens and on paper.
This variable font offers extensive control, allowing you to adjust sizes, weights (including Medium, Bold, and Fatface), and styles (such as Regular, Narrow, and Condensed). It even supports the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets.
Continuously updated and released under the SIL Open Font License, this font is available for both personal and commercial use. While not required, showing your appreciation by making a donation to the author is always a great idea.