The folks who make up the Collections Team at the Internet Archive have put together a nice survey of 100 years of Alphabet Books.
12 books are featured beginning with The Royal Alphabet (1808) and ending with Oliver Herford’s A Peter Pan Alphabet (1907). For over 200 years the alphabet book has been used as an educational tool but as you can see in this survey the form has become much more adult friendly over the years.
The Alphabet Book at Wikipedia