AMERICAN ANGLOPHILIA
[EDWARD VII – COMMON PRAYER.]
[Cover title: ‘Prayer Book of Edward VII’] The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, & other Rites & 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, & the Form & Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
[Norwood (MA), Plimpton Press for] New York, M. Walter Dunne, [1904].
Large 4to, pp. [2 (blank)], [14], 386, [2 (colophon, blank)], with loosely inserted Supplement showing Variants … in the Prayer Book of the American Church (pp. viii, uncut); printed in red and black throughout with numerous historiated woodcut borders and initials; small stain to lower margin of first leaves, otherwise clean throughout; in the publisher’s gilt purple cloth, arms of Canterbury, Westminster and London blocked in gilt and colour to upper board, top-edge gilt, others uncut, glazed blue endpapers embossed with lions rampant; spine very slightly sunned, but an excellent copy.
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[Cover title: ‘Prayer Book of Edward VII’] The Book of Common Prayer, and Administration of the Sacraments, & other Rites & 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, & the Form & Manner of Making, Ordaining, and Consecrating of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons.
Authorised American edition of the Essex House Press Book of Common Prayer, published in celebration of the accession of Edward VII.
The title is framed within scenes of London and Westminster and faced by a woodcut of Edward VII enthroned on the Coronation Chair in Westminster Abbey, surrounded by portraits his six predecessors of the same name (with Edward IV standing in front of Caxton’s press, one of the notable developments of his reign). The following pages are littered with woodcuts and initials, including not only Biblical scenes but also portraits of British monarchs, a procession of notable figures in English history (from St Alban to the nineteenth century), and a group of figures consulting books in a chained library.
The Prayer Book of Edward VII, designed by C.R. Ashbee of the Essex House Press, was first printed in England and here reprinted – despite its at-times heavily Anglocentric illustrations – in the United States. A loosely inserted Supplement showing Variants from the Prayer Book of the Church of England in the Prayer Book of the American Church includes a large initial with a portrait of Theodore Roosevelt.
