> 			<xsl:sort select=".//@page[1]"/>

> However, when run; nothing is sorted - as if the xsl:sort 
> wasn't there at all. I suspect that maybe it searches through 
> the entire document each time so that all articles are sorted 
> as "page 1"? What am I doing wrong here...
> 

You want (.//@page)[1].

Without parens, the predicate selects every page attribute that is the first
attribute of its containing element - which is completely unpredictable,
given that the order of attributes is undefined.

Regards,

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
http://twitter.com/michaelhkay