A Apple Pie

The alphabet is far older than the book that made it famous. A version was mentioned as early as 1,671 and it was in print by 1,742, teaching children their letters through the fate of a single pie: B bit it, C cut it, D dealt it, E eat it.

Kate Greenaway illustrated it in 1,886 for George Routledge and Sons, and Edmund Evans cut and printed the blocks. Evans was the great colour wood-engraver of the age, the printer behind Walter Crane and Randolph Caldecott as well, and the reason Victorian children's books look the way they do. Greenaway painted in watercolour and her drawings were transferred to the wood for him to engrave.

The alphabet skips I, and runs U through Z together at the end. That is not Greenaway tidying up. When the rhyme was first set in type, capital I and J were the same letter, and so were U and V, so the earliest printed versions simply had no room for them. The gap has been carried forward ever since.

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