Curious gifts for thoughtful people

A Place For Everything: The Curious History of Alphabetical Order

£9.99

| /

A celebration of the alphabet, from its beginnings to its pre-eminence as the organizing principle for the world's knowledge. While the order of the alphabet itself became fixed very soon after letters were first invented, their ability to sort and store and organize proved far less obvious. To many of our forebears, the idea of of organising things seemingly randomly (i.e. alphabetically) rather than by established systems of hierarchy or typology, lay somewhere between unthinkable and disrespectful. In A Place for Everything, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders draws our attention to both the neglected ubiquity of the alphabet and the long, complex history of its rise to prominence.

Paperback, 368 pages
Measures approx 20 x 13 cm