The Golden Alphabet; or Parent’s Guide and Child’s Instructor, published by Robert Taylor. This extremely rare miniature alphabet book from 1846 contains some beautiful decorated initials, followed by several pages of rhymes and moral platitudes for parenting and instruction of children. Based on these three images, I can only presume that Taylor was a far better evangelist than he was a printer or typesetter. Damn the wordspacing and to hell with letterspacing! The word kern must have been just a four-letter word to Taylor. If only he would have listened to his printer’s devil and followed some of the golden rules of typography—but then this book wouldn’t be such an endearing little treasure for its time.
With 3 woodcut illustrations, 126 pages, and likely the original textured flexible cloth cover, The Golden Alphabet can be found along with many other miniature books, at Bromer Books in Boston.