Book of Common Prayer

This unique edition of the Book of Common Prayer includes the texts of three different versions, 1549, 1559, and 1662, to provide a panorama of the history of ritual in England from the Reformation to the present day. The first edition for the common reader, with full notes and introduction, this is one of the seminal texts of human experience.

Containing opening sentences, propers, collects and readings for the celebration of the Eucharist on every Sunday and Holy Day of the Christian year and on a large number of saints' days, taken from the Book of Common Prayer and other traditional sources. A classic of Anglo-Catholic spirituality and devotion.

A classic book of ceremonies and services according to the Western Rite, for all services other than the Eucharist which a parish priest would normally carry out. It contains orders of service for baptism, marriage, funerals, sick visiting, home communion and penance, as well as numerous blessing ceremonies for buildings, objects and events.

This major, revisionist study upends our thinking about the ancestry and origins of the Elizabethan Book of Common Prayer, revealing it to have necessitated unprecedented levels of shared printing. In its close analysis of Anglican liturgy it will have considerable appeal to bibliographers and historians of Reformation and Tudor England.