Virtual Event | A Place for Everything; The Curious History of Alphabetical Order with Author Judith Flanders
A Place for Everything; The Curious History of Alphabetical Order
Alphabetical order seems like a kind of organizational Stonehenge – something that has always been, and always will be. But is that the case?
In the first-ever history of alphabetical order, author and historian Judith Flanders examines what we take for granted – the order of the alphabet – to see how it has shaped our world, from the Great Library of Alexandria to the contacts in our iPhone, with stops en route to explore how Yale and Harvard used to order students by their families’ status, the invention of filing cabinets, and how one of the greatest manuscript collectors of all times organized his library by – busts of Roman emperors?
Judith Flanders is the author of the bestselling The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed (2003); A Circle of Sisters (2001), which was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award; the New York Timesbestselling The Invention of Murder (2001), shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction; The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London (2012), shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times History Book of the Year; and The Making of Home (2014). She is also the author of Christmas: A Biography (2017). In her copious leisure time, she also writes the Sam Clair series of comic crime novels.
