A Place for Everything by Judith Flanders

'One of the many fascinations of Judith Flanders' book is that it reveals what a weird, unlikely creation the alphabet is. Along the way, the reader encounters a wonderful cast of characters,from the great collector Robert Cotton, who catalogued his manuscripts by the names of the busts of the Roman emperors surmounting his book cases, to the unassuming sixteenth-century London bookseller who ushered in a revolution by listing his authors by 'sirname' first. In A Place for Everything, acclaimed historian Judith Flanders fascinatingly lays out the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its use as a sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria to its current decline in prominence in the digital age. A Place for Everything : The Curious History of Alphabetical Orde £5.45 Free Postage A Place For Everything Flanders, Judith Buch £9.78 + £13.95 Postage Hover to zoom Have one to sell Sell it yourself Shop with confidence eBay Money Back Guarantee Get the item you ordered or get your money back. Long before Google searches, this magical system of organization gave us the ability to sort through centuries of thought, knowledge and literature, allowing us to sift, file, and find the information we have, and to locate the information we need. From school registers to electoral rolls, from dictionaries and encyclopaedias to library shelves, our lives have been ordered from A to Z.

And yet the order of the alphabet continues to play a major role in our adult lives. She is senior research fellow at the University of Buckingham, as well as a frequent contributor to the Sunday Telegraph, the Guardian, and the Wall Street Journal. Once we've learned it as children, few of us think much of the alphabet and its familiar sing-song order. Her works include the bestselling The Invention of Murder, Inside the Victorian Home, and The Victorian City. is a meticulour historian with a taste for the offbeat the story of the alphabet suits her well.

A Place for Everything by Judith Flanders