Photo: Pan Macmillan
Tilly Lloyd from Unity Books, Wellington, reviews A Place for Everything: the Curious History of Alphabetical Order by Judith Flanders. Published by Picador (hardback).
This book fascinatingly uncovers the story of the gradual triumph of alphabetical order, from its early days as a possible sorting tool in the Great Library of Alexandria in the third century BCE to its current decline in our age of Wikipedia and Google. The history includes the unassuming sixteenth-century London bookseller who ushered in a revolution by listing his authors by 'sirname' first.
