I bought the second edition (1958) of this book years ago and its been on my design bookshelf all these years. It was probably the first type book that showed complete alphabets in reasonable display sizes. Most print designers had books from typesetters that showed the range of faces they held but if they had a complete alphabet it was mostly small, between eighteen and twenty-four point, hardly good enough to trace off for a layout.
The fifty-three complete alphabets, mostly in caps (and hardly any have the additions like punctuation or £,$, & et cetera) are in mixed in with dozens of types showing a few words. I can remember tracing off the fifty-eight point Akizidenz-Grotesk many times for a layout, likewise, the lovely Schmalfette Grotesk, designed by Walter Hattenschweiler in 1954, good photocopies of the page were required to create a headline as the face didn't exist in lead.
I have a copy of Lettera 2, published in 1963, it follows the same format as book one. Niggli, the publishers, also issued books three and four. I believe they were all reprinted as a paperback box in the early seventies but I've never seen a set for sale. Existing copies of the hardback one and two seem extremely expensive on the used book market.
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