⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 2–3 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Please allow 2–3 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

Every letter we use descends from the chisel-cut capitals of Rome — and Allen W. Seaby's 1925 The Roman Alphabet and Its Derivatives traces that lineage letter by letter. Seaby, the British artist and writer, takes the inscriptional Roman alphabet as his starting point — the Trajan-column capitals, the square and rustic forms — and follows their derivatives through the centuries: uncials and half-uncials, Carolingian minuscules, Gothic blackletter, Renaissance humanist hands, and the modern alphabets that grew from them.

This is a lettering book for the letterer who wants to understand rather than merely copy. The plates show the development of each form, so the student sees why a serif sits where it does, why a minuscule curves as it curves — the structural logic that two thousand years of scribes and carvers built into the alphabet. For the sign painter laying out a Roman inscription, that understanding is the difference between letters that look Roman and letters that are Roman.

For stone carvers, memorial artists, and inscriptional letterers, Seaby's 1925 study is a compact classical education. For graphic designers and typographers, it is the historical backbone of the typefaces they use daily — the story of the alphabet itself, told by a working artist.

An antique lettering book on the foundation of all Western letterforms. For letterers, carvers, designers, and students of the alphabet's history.

Details: 6×9" paperback, black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1925 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1925 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1925 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.