Books On Books Collection – William Dugan

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How Our Alphabet Grew (1972)

How Our Alphabet Grew: The History of the Alphabet (1972)
William Dugan
Casebound, illustrated paper on board, illustrated endpapers and pastedowns. H320 x W227 mm. 72 pages. Acquired 14 March 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Curiously, little information about William Dugan appears online. He was a prolific illustrator of children’s books — especially those published by Golden Press in the 1960s and 1970s. He also authored as well as illustrated several early childhood books — on insects, signs, machines and vehicles. Two of his books, however, are meant for older children — this one and All about Houses (1975), which is a forerunner to Dorling Kindersley‘s children’s reference books.

Dugan’s ability to alter his style as writer and illustrator to the ages of his audience is notable. Even more notable is the diversity and inclusiveness of his reference works for older children. Despite the date of publication, a young girl occupies the foreground of the illustration of archaeologists, a feature that would have brought a smile to Ada Yardeni and still might to Tiphaine Samoyault.

Books On Books Collection – Ada Yardeni

2023/07/102023/08/09Books On BooksLeave a comment

A- dventure- Z’ (2003)

A- dventure- Z’: The Story of the Alphabet (2003)
Ada Yardeni
Paperback. 220 x 220 mm. 86 pages. Acquired from Carta Jerusalem, 28 March 2023.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

There is gray between what is unknown and known about the invention of shapes and signs for sounds. In the Books On Books collection, one side is reflected by works such as Cari Ferraro’s The First Writing (2004) and William Joyce’s The Numberlys (2014); the other, by Lyn Davies’ A is for Ox (2006) and Tiphaine Samoyault’s Alphabetical Order (1998). One engages myth, artistic extrapolation or fictional representation; the other, the rational, the evidentiary mundane or non-fictional presentation.

Ada Yardeni’s A- dventure- Z’: The Story of the Alphabet (2003) arches between them. She studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. As a designer at Koren Publishing, she created the font “Ada”, after which she went on to receive her doctorate under Joseph Naveh at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1991 and become an acknowledged expert in Hebrew palaeography.

Paired with intricate and annotated black and white diagrams, Yardeni’s illustrations use brilliant colors, an accomplished calligraphic hand and her palaeographic, historical and linguistic understanding of the alphabet to display the evolution of each letter based on its forms as they appear in ancient inscriptions. While most of the illustrations contain the cartoon figures seen below in the display of the Hebrew Bet and Arabic Ba:’, the illustration for the letter Samekh (on which the letter X is based) takes on the aspect of abstract pop art.

Alongside the diagrams, the clear, uncluttered text delivers a scholarly assuredness about the appearance, disappearance and changes of strokes in the early signs found in the Sinai, but the artistry somehow evokes the mystery that continues to envelop the invention of shapes and signs for sounds and the differences in the many writing and alphabetical systems around the world. Yardeni’s still more scholarly works are to be found elsewhere, but A- dventure- Z’: The Story of the Alphabet holds its own as a companion to any of the reference works noted below. With its graphics and its charming tale of a Canaanite king seeking a way to preserve his songs, it also holds its own with any of the children’s books noted below.

Books On Books Collection – Tiphaine Samoyault

2023/07/102024/12/01Books On BooksLeave a comment

Alphabetical Order (1998)

Alphabetical Order: How the Alphabet Began (1998)
Tiphaine Samoyault
Casebound, illustrated glossy paper over boards, decorated doublures. H270 x W195 mm. 32 unnumbered pages. Acquired from World of Books, 15 August 2022.
Photos: Books On Books Collection.

Tiphaine Samoyault had the extraordinary experience of growing up in residence at the Château de Fontainebleau, where her father Jean-Pierre Samoyault was the conservator and where, almost a century and a half before, Jacques-Joseph Champollion-Figeac was the librarian.

Alphabetical Order is a translation. Its original title — Le Monde des pictogrammes (Paris: Circonflexe, 1996) — better reflects the well-illustrated character of the book. The images, the hand lettering, the ghost-printed background and handling of color are constant reminders of the pictographic roots of most alphabets and writing systems. The final section — Artists and Alphabets — punctuates those reminders. In fact, the book’s endpapers act as quotation marks around the point.

Books On Books Collection – Don Robb and Anne Smith

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Ox, House, Stick (2007)

Ox, House, Stick: The History of Our Alphabet (2007)
Don Robb (text) and Anne Smith (ills)
Casebound, illustrated paper over boards. H280 x W217 mm. 48 pages.Acquired from The Saint Bookstore, 14 August 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.
Text copyright © 2007 by Donald Robb. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Anne Smith/Lilla Rogers Studio.
Used with permission by Charlesbridge Publishing, Inc. 9 Galen Street, Suite 220, Watertown, MA 02472. (617)-926 0329

A fair number of fiction and non-fiction children’s books on the history of the alphabet have made their way into the Books On Books Collection.

Of the fiction variety, there is Rudyard Kipling’s “Just So Story” of the alphabet’s invention: How the Alphabet Was Made (1983), illustrated by Chloe Cheese. Another fiction entry is James Rumford’s retelling of Cadmus’ visit to Crete in There’s a Monster in the Alphabet (2002) and William Joyce’s inventive The Numberlys (2014).

In the non-fiction category are William Dugan’s How Our Alphabet Grew (1972), Tiphaine Samoyault’s Alphabetical Order (1998), Renzo Rossi’s The Revolution of the Alphabet (2009) and the entry here: Don Robb’s and Anne Smith’s Ox, House, Stick.

Ox, House, Stick is scheduled to appear as part of an exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford (opening 15 July 2023). “A is for Ox” designates the display case devoted to the question: Where did the alphabet come from? It’s not just a question for archaeologists, historians, linguists and paleographers — or children’s book authors and illustrators. It’s one generating repeated inspiration for book artists as shown by Abe Kuipers’ Letters (1971), Lanore Cady’s Houses & Letters (1977), another rendition of the Kipling tale by Gerald Lange in The Neolithic Adventures of Taffi-Mai Metallu-Mai (1997), designed by Gerald Lange and produced with Robin Price, Dave Wood’s Alphabetica (2002), Cari Ferraro’s The First Writing (2004), and Helen Malone’s Alphabetic Codes (2005).

Artists’ books share much with children’s books in general. They both play with form and structure. They play with words and images, sometimes images without words and sometimes just shapes. Almost always an attention to all the senses. Children’s alphabet books in particular display features that appeal to book artists: play with animals, the Babel of languages, bodies, calligraphy, colors, design (of letters, page and book) and, as above, alphabet origin stories. Viewing and exploring alphabet books and artist’s books side by side heightens the enjoyment and appreciation of both.

Books On Books Collection – Tommy Thompson

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The ABC of Our Alphabet (1952)

The ABC of Our Alphabet: A primer of the lineal history of our present-day letters (1952)
Tommy Thompson
Casebound with doublures showing map of locations of alphabet development.
Acquired from St Luke’s Hospice, Sheffield, 6 August 2022. Photos: Books On Books Collection.

First appearing in 1942, Samuel Winfield (Tommy) Thompson’s somewhat forgotten children’s introduction to the history of the alphabet occupies an interesting position in that line of work that includes Oscar Ogg’s The 26 Letters (1964), Tiphaine Samoyault’s Alphabetical Order (1998), Renzo Rossi’s The Revolution of the Alphabet (2009) and Don Robb’s Ox, House, Stick (2010). For a collector of children’s alphabet books and alphabet-related artists’ books, the decision whether to acquire it balances on its interior design and content.

With its overlay of second-color illustrations on the text, Thompson’s book makes for an interesting forerunner to Lyn Davies’ fine press A is for Ox. Thompson falls prey to instances of illegibility from the technique, but both enjoy instances of brilliant juxtaposition of word and redrawn images.

Two-color illustration overlaying text. Right: Davies. Left: Thompson.

Among the primers of alphabet history, Thompson’s also stands out for the attention it gives to North American Indian pictorial writing. Rather than the usual Eurocentric sources, the Leni-Lenape, Dakota and Sioux Nations provide the bulk of examples of the method. The enlightened perspective, however, is undercut by a strain of cultural and historical supremacy apparent in several passages and, in particular, the perpetuation of the Walum Olum hoax and inclusion of a chapter from Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha to stand in for the absence of any similar memorialization of painted grave posts. Although Thompson is point blank on how “the invasion of the white man” prevented the growth and development of this method of writing, consider this passage describing the Leni-Lenape Penn Treaty of 1682 that was woven with perforated shell beads (wampum):

The figures of a white man and an Indian are woven in the belt, clasping hands in a true gesture of friendship. The white man is portrayed wearing a hat, as the Indian always drew the symbol of the white man. This treaty of peace was never broken or forgotten.

Except that, in the 1860s, most of the Leni-Lenape Nation was forcibly displaced to Oklahoma.

It was not until the 1990s that the so-called Leni-Lenape cosmographical poems of Walum Olum were proven to be fake, but suspicions were strong in the 1930s. All this is compounded as the book laments the ephemerality of the “Walum Olum poems” and the custom of pictorial grave posts:

Pictorial epitaphs on Indian grave posts were quite common in the early days of the new world. But knowledge of this romantic custom as well as the knowledge of the Red Man’s art of picture writing will live forever, had there been no other record of him but the beautiful “Song of Hiawatha” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Thompson’s design skills and his side note of claim to fame as reportedly the first recipient of royalties for typeface design (Thompson Quill Script) nudged the balance toward acquisition. Maybe perversely the annoying cultural dissonance also nudged the balance in that direction. The book’s presence provides the opportunity to compare it line for line with the other primers and look harder for the signs of the cultural blinkers we are wearing now. Also, with authentic pictorial cosmography available from the Navajo (Diné) Nation and with new archaeological finds from the Middle East (see below for both), perhaps it is time for a new primer against which to compare Thompson and the rest.

Books On Books

Curated by Robert Bolick

Tiphaine Samoyault

Books On Books Collection – William Dugan

How Our Alphabet Grew (1972)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Ada Yardeni

A- dventure- Z’ (2003)

Further Reading

Children’s books

Reference works

Books On Books Collection – Tiphaine Samoyault

Alphabetical Order (1998)

Further Reading

Books On Books Collection – Don Robb and Anne Smith

Ox, House, Stick (2007)

Further Reading

Animal alphabets & artists’ books

Babel, alphabets & artists’ books

Bodies & artists’ books

Calligraphy, alphabets and artists’ books

Colors, alphabets and artists’ books

Design (of letters), alphabets & artists’ books

Structures, alphabets & artist’s books

Books On Books Collection – Tommy Thompson

The ABC of Our Alphabet (1952)

Further Reading