The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of The Church of England: Together with the Psalter or Psalms of David, Pointed as they are to be sung or said in Churches: And the Form or Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.

PRAYER BOOK,.

Item Number: 60025

Oxford: Printed by T. Wright and W. Gill, 1770.

Eighteenth century Book of Common Prayer. Folio, bound in contemporary red morocco, marbled endpapers. A.J.A. Symons’ copy, with bookplate “From the Collection of A.J.A. Symons” on front pastedown, and inscribed by him on the verso of the front free endpaper, “Thomas Driberg from A.J.A. Symons, Christmas 1937.” Thomas Driberg, Baron Bradwell was a British journalist, politician and High Anglican churchman. Symons was an English writer and bibliographer. He was the son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants. He was a self-educated man who in his youth had been apprenticed as a furrier. In 1922, he founded the First Edition Club to publish limited editions and to organize exhibitions of rare books and manuscripts. In 1924 he published a bibliography of first editions of the works of Yeats, and in 1930 he founded the Book Collector’s Quarterly. He was an authority on writers and editions of the 1890s, and he published An Anthology of Nineties Verse in 1928. In very good condition with noted provenance.

The Book of Common Prayer was created out of Thomas Cranmer's desire for a liturgical text that all of Europe's Protestant, English-speaking churches could agree on. Its magisterial liturgical language became "a source of spiritual inspiration for most Englishmen second only to the Bible" (PMM 75). The Book of Common Prayer was first issued in 1549 during the reign of Edward VI and revised through the reign of Mary I and James II. The first edition was approved by a committee of thirteen clerics and issued with the passing of the Act of Uniformity which officially abolished the Latin mass in England. Cranmer, who served as the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1533 to 1555, was influenced by German Lutheran services when composing the prayers which took several years to compile and are now considered to be masterpieces of the English language.