How to use letters for restructured text lists with more than 26 items?

If I make a Restructured Text list with letters as the bullets, this works fine for the first 26 letters "a.".."z.". However, when I extend the list to 27 items or more, such as with "aa.", then the list stops rendering (see example screenshot). What can I do to make long lists render correctly?

Example input:

Lorem:
    a. ipsum
    b. dolor
    c. sit
    d. amet,
    e. consectetur
    f. adipiscing
    g. elit,
    h. sed
    i. do
    j. eiusmod
    k. tempor
    l. incididunt
    m. ut
    n. labore
    o. et
    p. dolore
    q. magna
    r. aliqua.
    s. Ut
    t. enim
    u. ad
    v. minim
    w. veniam,
    x. quis
    y. nostrud
    z. exercitation
    aa. ullamco
    ab. laboris
    ac. nisi
    ad. ut
    ae. aliquip
    af. ex
    ag. ea
    ah. commodo
    ai. consequat.
    aj. Duis
    ak. aute
    al. irure
    am. dolor
    an. in
    ao. reprehenderit
    ap. in
    aq. voluptate

Resulting output (screenshot):

Also, I'm aware that there's probably an explicit CSS option to make this work, but I'd prefer not to make my docstring harder to read in the code file just so that it renders correctly after processing with RST.

Only single characters are recognized as alphabetical list markers for an enumerated list in reStructuredText. Lines starting with two letters are interpreted as one ordinary paragraph — there should have been a (WARNING/2) Enumerated list ends without a blank line; unexpected unindent for your input example.

But not everything is lost. You may set the list style with an alphbetic marker on the first item(s) and use the auto-enumerator (#) for subsequent items like:

u. ad
v. minim
w. veniam,
#. quis
#. nostrud
#. exercitation
#. ullamco
#. laboris
#. nisi
#. ut
#. aliquip

If you want to continue a long alphabetical list at some higher value, you may use numerical markers and precede the list with a "class" directive:

.. class:: loweralpha

27. ullamco
28. laboris
29. nisi

Notes:

• In Sphinx input, you may need to write .. rstclass:: instead of .. class::.
• Rendering depends on the stylesheet (see the HTML output of a short list with correct styling or the stylesheet "minimal.css" for supported class values).
• The second method should work out of the box with HTML5, other output formats need custom style rules.
• Some output formats ignore the enumeration type value and use a fixed style for all enumerations.
• LaTeX limits the number of items in alphabetically numbered lists to a-z (there may by some LaTeX package that lifts this restriction).