The 26 Letters

A typographer's love letter to the alphabet that shaped Western civilization. Oscar Ogg's classic study, here in its Eighth Printing, traces each letter's evolution from Phoenician through Roman to modern forms with infectious enthusiasm. Ogg, a distinguished calligrapher and type designer, makes paleography thrilling - revealing how the letter "A" inverted from an ox head, how lowercase emerged from scribal shortcuts, how printing standardized chaos into the forms we use today.

The book's 1962 printing suggests its classroom adoption by art schools and design programs during mid-century modernism's peak, when designers like Paul Rand and Saul Bass were revolutionizing American visual culture. Ogg's approach balances scholarly rigor with accessibility, making complex typographic history comprehensible to students and general readers.

Thomas Y. Crowell's commitment to keeping the book in print across multiple editions established it as the standard introduction to letterform history. For graphic designers, typographers, or anyone fascinated by how visual language evolved, this offers both historical foundation and design inspiration - demonstrating that the twenty-six shapes we take for granted contain millennia of human ingenuity.