ABC of Bugs and Plants in a Northern Garden (2012)
Judy Fairclough Sgantas and Claire Van Vliet
Clamshell box, softcover, open spine, paper-tab-sewn binding. Box: H188 x W192 x D65 mm. Book: H167 x W171 x D35 mm. 27 f&gs, 1 folded pastedown at end. Edition of 120, of which this is #45. Acquired from Vamp & Tramp, 15 September 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artists’ permission.
ABCing: Seeing the Alphabet Differently
Colleen (Ellis) Comerford (2010)
Board book, illustrated paper-on-board cover. H160 x W160 mm. 66 pages. Acquired from Powell’s Bookstore, 29 June 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with artist’s permission.
A is for Axolotl: An Unusual Animal ABC (2022)
Catherine Macorol
Casebound laminated cover with dustjacket. H230 x W290 mm. 32 pages. Acquired from Saint Bookstore, 28 May 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Unfortunately climate change makes possible a sub-collection of abecedaries on the subject of endangered animals. Since Dick King-Smith and Quentin Blake’s Alphabeasts in 1990, there have been more than a dozen. Catherine Macorol’s is the most recent within the Books On Books Collection.
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Lettered Typefaces and Alphabets by Clotilde Olyff (2000)
Jan Middendorp and Clotilde Olyff
Spiral-bound softcover of 78 pages and measuring H235 x W215 mm with a 28-page booklet measuring H165 x W115 mm bound in. Acquired from Klondyke Books, Almere, NL, 28 November 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection
This is the rare first edition as published by the late Jan Middendorp through his Druk Editions. It bears all the hallmarks of his eye for design — the black coated wired binding, the heavy embossed card cover, the use of color to underscore the text’s theme, the embedded booklet — all nevertheless centering and providing a platform for the art and design of Clotilde Olyff.
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Dero Abecedarius! (2001)
Klaus Peter Dencker
Loose folios in heavy card box, title on card pasted on front box cover. H298 x W210 mm. 34 folios. Inkjet on BFK Rives 210 gram. Edition of 50, of which this is #30. Acquired from Red Fox Press, 3 January 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Visual poems in an ABC sequence and inspired by the Statue of Liberty. Klaus Peter Dencker belongs in the vast company of notable visual poets and “alphabet-etishists”, too many to list here, but within the Books On Books Collection, there are Jim Avignon & Anja Lutz, Jim Clinefelter, Martín Gubbins, Bernard Heidsieck, Karl Kempton and Sam Winston, all of whom offer fruitful comparisons.
Continue readingRichard J. Hoffman (1912-1989) was a fine press printer and taught print and design at California State University, Los Angeles. His interests in typography, miniature books and the alphabet are represented by two works in the Books On Books Collection: “Don’t Nobody Care about Zeds” (1987) and Otto Ege’s The Story of the Alphabet (1988).
Both books scratch the collection’s “alphabet itch”. The first provides the added satisfaction of complementing the children’s books that champion the alphabet’s last letter: Jon Agee’s Z Goes Home (2006), Alethea Kontis & Bob Kolar’s AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First (2012), Sean Lamb & Mike Perry’s Z Goes First (2018) and Lou Kuenzler & Julia Woolf’s Not Yet Zebra! . The second adds an alphabet history to the miniature abecedaries as well as a more than usually intricate design.
“Don’t Nobody Care about Zeds”
A Modest Book About an Oft-overlooked Character of the Alphabet Prepared for the Pleasure of Zamoranans* (1987)
Richard J. Hoffman
Hardcover, casebound. Cloth and paper cover with colored endbands and printed doublures. H160 x W120 mm. 176 pages. Edition of 200. Acquired from Scott Emerson Books, 5 September 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
The Phoenician Alphabet (2022)
Nayla Romanos Iliya (art), Rose Issa, Susan Babaie and Peter Murray (text)
Casebound laminated cover. H205 x W185 mm. 108 pages. Acquired from Les presses du réel, 2 February 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
A Apple Pie (2005)
Gennady Spirin
Casebound, laminated paper over boards, pastedown with matching endpapers, sewn. 275 x 275 mm. 32 pages. Acquired from Bud Plant & Hutchison Books, 13 March 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection. Displayed with permission of the artist.
“Never judge a book by its cover” does not mean “ignore the clues and promises there”. A laminated cover and lay-flat binding are not uncommon among children’s books. Nor is the spreading of an illustration across the back and front covers. What is unusual about Gennady Spirin’s A Apple Pie is how it uses them to offer clues and promises of the lesson this book offers beyond the lesson of the alphabet. It promises a lesson about perspective and the canvas of the book.
Look at how the back and front covers play with landscape perspective and the notion of the book as frame and canvas. The head of the spine interrupts the landscape to join the narrow orange frame that demarcates the edges of the landscape. All the same, the landscape’s hill of apples in the foreground overlaps the spine to descend into the landscape’s midground on the back cover, which deepens into a background of at least five levels like a medieval or Renaissance painting.
Another technique of perspective from those traditions is to place in the background things we know are large and in the foreground what we know is smaller. A temple or mansion behind, a mother and child or pie up front. These objects and figures often perform temporal double duty as in The Flight into Egypt, where the tiny workers misdirect the mass of Herod’s soldiers in the background while the Holy family looms large resting in the foreground. In Spirin’s illustration, the past apple-picking appears in the distance, and the resulting pie is near.
Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1518-20)
Joachim Patinir
Copyright ©Museo Nacional del Prado
Spirin slyly multiplies this trick with his apple pie in the foreground with its tiny characters dancing around it. Yes, this book is going to replay the traditional celebration of the apple pie alphabet, but pay attention to relative sizes. The pie is monumental, larger even than the three-dimensional letter A that sits atop and casts its shadow over the banner of calligraphy, so watch for how the trick of shadows draws attention to perspective, to the roman vs calligraphic letters and to the surfaces on which the letters and tricks of perspective play out.
The very first double-page spread delivers on the cover’s clues and promises.
The oversized carved A serves as an arch to provide an example of a word beginning with A and casts its shadow over the oversized pie and cutting board that a team of elf-sized bakers has borne under it to the applause of mother and children who are mid-sized between the pie and bakers. The A is so oversized that its apex disappears from the image area. Bringing further attention to the image area and deepening its dimensionality, Spirin “cuts” the surface on which it is drawn and curls the cut section against the arm of the A.
In the world of letters, size matters — in the form of the upper and lower cases.
Further drawing attention to the art of illustrating the alphabet, not only does Spirin hand-draw examples of their forms in print and calligraphy, he leaves the guidelines for the base and x-height in place, eliminating them after (or before?) using them as the measure for the base and crust of a miniature pie in the margin. In a sense, the process of lettering has also become the canvas for A Apple Pie.
This process is displayed for every letter. Most also have a small apple vignette in the lower left or lower right corner.
As with the ants surrounding the apple, most of these vignettes serve up images that begin with the letters of their pages (for example, O for owl and P for pig) and are trimmed to re-emphasize the pages’ image space with which Spirin plays.
Letters other than A have images that cross the divide of pages. When they do, Spirin’s historical influences ranging from the medieval to the Renaissance to the Victorians stand out even more. His play with figures, color, perspective and shadow in the letter J pages recall Brueghel, Bosch, Patinir and, of course, Kate Greenaway.
Detail from Children’s Games (1560), Jan Brueghel, Kunsthistoriches Museum Wien
Detail from Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1500), Hieronymus Bosch, Museo del Prado
A Apple Pie (c. 1886), Kate Greenaway, Internet Archive
The tradition of the “apple pie” mnemonic reaches almost as far back as the artistic ones. As noted on Spirin’s copyright page and confirmed in Peter Hunt’s International Companion, alphabet primers based on the mnemonic must have been well known prior to 1671 when the English cleric John Eachard referred to it. Compiled from the Bodleian Libraries’ record of “apple pie” items in the Opie Collection and from preparation for the exhibition Alphabets Alive!, here is a starting list for the industrious apple-picking artist interested in confecting an extension to the tradition. (Suggested additions to the menu are welcome in the Comments.) Scholarly baker’s apprentices should also start with the dissertation of the appropriately named A. Robin Hoffman (now at the Art Institute of Chicago); see Further Reading below.
British Library (formerly British Museum)
1764. Tom thumb’s play-book : to teach children their letters as soon as they can speak. London. Contains “A Apple Pie” as well as “A was an Archer“.
1791. The tragical death of a apple-pye : who was cut in pieces and eat by twenty five gentlemen : with whom all little people ought to be very well acquainted. London: J. Evans. Internet Archive.
1800-12. The Tragical Death of a Apple-Pye, Who Was Cut in Pieces and Eat by Twenty Five Gentlemen with
Whom All Little People Ought to Be Well Acquainted. London: Printed for John Evans, 42, Long-lane, West-Smithfield. Folded sheet, as issued. 9.5 x 5.9 cm. Opie N 589.
1808. The History of the Apple Pie. Written by Z. London: John Harris and Son. Opie C 1152. Also viewable here.
1815. The History of Master Watkins : To Which Is Added, The Tragical Death of an Apple-Pie. Chelmsford: Marsden, printer. Opie N 887.
1820. Hone, W. & Cruikshank, G. The Political “A Apple Pie” … by the Author of “The House that Jack Built”. Sixth ed. London: Printed for the Author; sold by J. Johnston. Johnson e.1111.
1820, ca. The History of an Apple-Pie. Written by Z. London: Harris and Son. 17.3 x 10.5 cm. Opie N 582.
1827. The History of A Apple Pie. Written by Z. London: Orlando Hodgson.
1835-57. Marks’ History of an Apple Pie. King Pippin’s Alphabet for Good Children. London: J. Marks.
17 x 10.2 cm. Opie N 588. Also view here.
1836. Bouncing B. The History of an Apple Pie. William Darton and Son.
1837-45. The History of an Apple Pie. London: Darton & Clark. 16 x 10.5 cm. Opie N 583.
1841. The tragical death of an apple pie : who was cut to pieces and eaten by twenty-five gentlemen with whom all little people ought to be acquainted. Printed by J. Paul & Co. London: 2 & 3 Monmouth-court. View here.
1843-49. The History of an Apple Pie; with Ditties for the Nursery, by Dame Dearlove’s Ditties. London: Grant and Griffith. 17.9 x 10.8 cm. Colophon of S & J. Bentley, Wilson, and Fley, Bangor House, Shoe Lane. Opie N 584.
1851-74. The Apple-Pie Alphabet. London: John and Charles Mozley, 6 Paternoster Row. 13.1 x 8.2 cm. Colophon of Henry Mozley and Sons, Derby. This title number 26 in the publisher’s series of penny chapbooks. Opie N 580. See also Opie N 581.
1856-65. The History of an Apple Pie. Written by Z. London: Griffith and Farran. 17.6 x 11.5 cm. Reissue as a rag book of the 1820 edition published by J. Harris. Wrappers have the colophon of H.W. Hutchings, 63, Snow Hill, London. Opie N 585. See also Opie N 586 for larger version (18 x 19.8 cm). From the library of Roland Knaster.
1860, ca. The History of an Apple Pie. London: J. Bysh, 157 & 158 Albany Road, Old Kent Road. 13.6 x 10.7 cm. Opie N 587.
1860, not after. The Apple Pie. London: Darton & Co., 58 Holborn Hill. 25 x 17 cm. Darton’s Indestructible Elementary Children’s Books. Inscription dated 8 February 1860. Opie N 2. Also view here.
1861, not before. The History of A, Apple Pie. London: Dean & Son, Printers, Lithographers, and Book and Print
Publishers, 11, Ludgate Hill. 25 x 16.5 cm. (Dean’s Untearable Cloth Children’s Coloured Toy Books). Opie N 4.
1865, ca. A. Apple Pie. London: Frederick Warne & Co. 26.8 x 22.6 cm. Aunt Louisa’s London Toy Books. Colophon of Kronheim & Co. Opie N 1.
1865-89. The History of A Apple Pie. London: George Routledge & Sons. 31 x 25.2 cm. Rear wrapper has colophon of the lithographer L. van Leer & Co, Holland and 62 Ludgate Hill Opie N 5. Also see Pussy’s Picture Book. Opie N 1017.
1874. Routledge’s nursery album for children. London: George Routledge and Sons. A.
1886, ca. Kate Greenaway. A Apple Pie. London: George Routledge and Sons. Opie N 18. Also view here and here.
1890, ca. E.A. Cooke. The Story of A Apple Pie. London: R. E. King & Co.
1899. A.B.C. of the Apple Pie. Printed on linen. New York: McLouglin Bros. Viewable here.
19__, ca. A Apple Pie. An Alphabet from Modelled Designs by Mrs. Wm. Harbutt. Pen and Ink Drawings by Noel C. Harbutt A.R.C.A. London: Dean & Son, Ltd; Bathampton: W. Harbutt. Plasticine Works & Studio. 25.4 x 18.8 cm. Opie N 3.
1966. The Tragical Death of A. Apple Pie Who Was Cut in Pieces, and Eaten by Twenty-Six Little Villains.
[Whitstable, Kent: Ben Sands at his Shoestring Press]. Leporello. 11.5 x 13.4 cm. #185/225 copies. Gift of Roland Knaster. Opie N 590.
From the Bodleian Librairies’ copy of The Tragical Death … (1966)
Ben Sands
Photo: Books On Books.
1974. William Stobbs. A is an Apple Pie. London: The Bodley Head.
1986. Tracey Campbell Pearson. A Was an Apple Pie. London: Bodley Head.
1987. Gavin Bishop. A Apple Pie. Oxford University Press.
2011. Alison Murray. Apple Pie ABC. London: Orchard Books.
“Alphabets Alive!“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books.
Hoffman, A. Robin. 2012. “‘Doubtful Characters’: Alphabet Books and Battles over Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Print Culture“. Diss. University of Pittsburgh.
Hunt, Peter. 2004. International Companion Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, p. 179.
Webb, Poul. 2017~ . “Alphabet Books — Parts 1-8” on Art & Artists. Google has designated this site “A Blog of Note”, well deserved for its historical breadth in examples, clarity of images and insight.
P is for Pterodactyl: The Worst Alphabet Book Ever (2018)
Raj Haldar, Chris Carpenter & Maria Tina Beddia
Hardback, illustrated paper on boards, dustjacket. H222 x W286 mm. 40 pages. Purchased from Amazon, 17 August 2021.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.
If a posthumous revision of Eric Partridge’s Comic Alphabets were possible, this one would have to be included. But why did it take so long for the oddball abecedary and the oddities of spelling to meet in “The Worst Alphabet Book Ever“? Or maybe the 19th century spelling reformer Alexander J. Ellis compiled a still-to-be-discovered abecedary displaying a carp above the word ghoti.
Apropos of carp, though: the entry for bdellium is irritating on two scores. First, it is not the only word dumb enough to begin with “b”; there is also bdellatomy and bdellometer. Second, while true that the tree producing the gum resin bdellium is native to the East Indies and Africa, there are words other than dumb ending in a silent /b/ that the authors might have chosen to underscore their point. But they didn’t and fell into the sticky colonial trap illustrated (somewhat more obviously) below.
From Abc En Relief (1955)
Jo Zagula and Marguerite Thiebold
Photo: Books On Books Collection.
“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection.
“Alphabets Alive! – Adventures“. 19 July 2023. Books On Books Collection.
Ellis, Alexander John. 1848. A Plea for Phonetic Spelling. 2d ed. London: F. Pitman.
Partridge, Eric, and Michael Foreman. 1961. Comic Alphabets : Their Origin Development Nature. London: Routledge & Paul.
Harris, Chris and Dan Santat. 2020. The Alphabet’s Alphabet .First ed. New York: Little Brown and Company.
Jason D’Aquino’s Circus ABC (2010)
Jason D’Aquino
Hardcover, cloth spine, printed paper over boards. H158 x W 158 mm. 56 pages. Acquired from Amazon, 24 September 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection
At the intersection of alphabet books and artists’ books, surrealists and neo-surrealists come sailing, unicycling, swimming, stilt-walking and crossbreeding. Jason D’Aquino distinguishes his contribution with a circus theme and miniaturist’s hand, although his publisher Simply Read Books expands it to 158 mm square (6 x 6 inches).
The illustrations are more R. Crumb than Max Ernst, and the letters themselves hark back to Jean Midolle’s Écritures Ánciennes D’après Des Manuscrits & Les Meillers Ouvrages (1834). But in concept and execution, Jason D’Aquino’s Circus ABC is original. The fineness of D’Aquino’s drawings fascinates the eye.
Jean Midolle, Alphabet Composée 1832. From Luc Devroye’s Type Design, Typography, Typefaces and Fonts, last updated 18 May 2023. Accessed 26 May 2023.
D’Aquino’s book is also eclectic in its abecedary approach. Above, where the illustration for the letter C offers several things beginning with that letter, those for A and B do not play the “find the object” game, although they do have their jokes. The mermaid’s is an optical illusion.The barker’s joke is that he is D’Aquino’s self-portrait. And with the letter Z below, for which nothing shown begins with the letter Z, the visual puzzle lies in figuring out what the crown, martini and cigarette have to do with the anatomical swap-out between the goldfish and chimp — and why the image so strongly echoes that for letter A.
Surrealism has roots in the art of Hieronymus Bosch as well as in the fantastical alphabets of Jean Midolle and his medieval predecessors. Not surprising then that elements of D’Aquino’s world can be found in the Garden of Earthly Delights and the Kennicott Bible. Other surrealist alphabets from the Books On Books Collection are listed below.
Above: Detail from Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Early Delights (1490-1510). Below: Hebrew Bible (Former Prophets with Targum and various commentaries), Bodleian Library MS. Kennicott 5, 446v.
“Abecedaries I (in progress)“. Books On Books Collection.
“Jim Avignon & Anja Lutz“. 29 October 2022. Books On Books Collection.
“Leonard Brett“. 8 August 2023. Books On Books Collection.
“Roman Cieślewicz“. Books On Books Collection. In progress.
“Leslie Haines“. 4 November 2022. Books On Books Collection.
“Lynn Hatzius“. 2 December 2022. Books On Books Collection.
“Peter Hutchinson“. Books On Books Collection. In progress.
“Peter Malutzki“. Books On Books Collection. In progress.
“Clément Meriguet“. 13 November 2021. Books On Books Collection.
“Paul Noble“. 20 April 2021. Books On Books Collection.
“Judy Pelikan“. 2 June 2023. Books On Books Collection.
“Rose Sanderson“. 30 May 2023. Books On Books Collection.
“Pat Sweet“. 18 January 2023. Books On Books Collection.
“Ludwig Zeller“. 24 March 2020. Books On Books Collection.
Druker, Elina, and Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina. 2015. Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Especially Philip Nel’s “Surrealism for Children”, pp. 267-83.
Van Huijstee, Pieter, and NTR. 2016. Interactive Documentary, Jheronimus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Amsterdam: Pieter van Huystee Film, NTR. Accessed 26 May 2023.
Books On Books 