I hope you somehow found an original printing (lucky you! all I have is
a photocopy) and not the reprint by "Gorgias Press," which unaccountably
reprinted the 1883 original rather than the 1899 "second edition," which
added a page or so of Corrigenda. (I don't know whether there are any
changes in the body of the book.)

For a fuller appreciation, see my article in Israel Oriental Studies 20
(2000), which was supposed to be published about two years ago.

Michael Everson wrote:

>
> I've just acquired a copy of what Peter Daniels described as "the
> first book on writing from a scientific perspective":
>
> Taylor, Isaac. 1883. The alphabet: an account of the origin and
> development of letters. Vol. 1: Semitic alphabets; Vol. 2: Aryan
> alphabets. London: Kegan Paul.
>
> 756 pages of delight! Some very nice charts of Brahmic scripts in
> Vol. 2. In due course I expect that I will scan in useful bits if it
> will help us to encode new scripts.
> --
> Michael Everson *** Everson Typography *** http://www.evertype.com

NB His South(east) Asian letterforms are largely taken from Holle's
charts, which are now re-available in *Written Language and Literacy*.
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...