Lyn Davies

What a fascinating and beautiful little book!

The first half traces the development of the alphabet as a system of writing, representing (more-or-less) one symbol per sound. Specifically it covers the Latin alphabet as used in modern English, rather than, say, modern Greek or Cyrillic, from hieroglyphs though other forms such as cuneiform as they developed around the Mediterranean region, mainly for use in trade. Photographs and illustrations give a clear comparison of the different types of script.

The second half switches from the general system to the specific characters, tracing the development of the 26 letters of the English alphabet as far back as is known. In each case there is a timeline of different representations of the same letter, in some cases as far back as Egyptian hieroglyphs, demonstrating the development of the Roman capital letters and the later hand-written lowercase, with an explanation of the changes along the way.

A fantastically informative and beautiful little book, now sadly out of print, but it's well worth looking for a second-hand copy on eBay!… (more)

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1697767.html

A decent little book on the origins of the alphabet, the first half being about the global question of how the Latin script developed from hieroglyphics via cuneiform, Phoenician, Greek and etruscan, and the second half taking each letter individually. I've read several books on this topic so not much was new to me; the information is very much presented for the non-specialist, and readers may well wonder what the sounds were precisely that were represented by the Semitic letters aleph and ayin (𐤀 and 𐤏); Davies makes no attempt to bring in the details of phonetics. It's also a bit of a shame that he misses out any discussion of the lost letters of the English alphabet - he does at least meantion yogh and wynn (ȝ and ƿ) but not thorn or edh (þ or ð), which is an educationaal opportunity missed - or of any other Latin-based languages. One would get the impression from the book that the English version of the Latin alphabet is the only one currently in use.… (more)