Majuscule and Minuscule
Jayne English
When Walt Whitman sauntered through the streets of New York City, enjoying a conversation and drink at Pfaff’s, talking to omnibus drivers on Broadway, or attending an opera at the Park Theater, the sights, sounds, and multitude of experiences found expression in his collection of poems, Leaves of Grass. He published the first edition in 1855 with his own money and set much of the type himself at the print shop of some friends. To order the words of its poems, he chose letters from two wooden cases, one above the other. This process of typesetting gives us the words lowercase and uppercase letters, more formally known as minuscule and majuscule letters.
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