“AS A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION, IT IS FOR MOST ENGLISHMEN SECOND ONLY TO THE BIBLE”: LOVELY 1723 TALL FOLIO BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER IN FINE CONTEMPORARY GILT-PANELED MOROCCO DECORATED WITH THE GILT MONOGRAM DEVICE OF KING GEORGE I

BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments. London: John Baskett… and the Assigns of Thomas Newcomb and Henry Hills, 1723. Tall folio (10-1/2 by 16 inches), contemporary full mottled calf expertly rebacked with original spine neatly laid down, corners and spine panels with gilt device of the crown of King George I, raised bands, renewed endpapers, all edges gilt. $8250.

Beautiful early 18th-century tall folio edition of the venerable Book of Common Prayer— the treasury of ritual, prayer and Scripture that has indelibly shaped the piety and literature of the English-speaking world—with fine engraved frontispiece, handsome in nicely restored contemporary calf featuring the gilt device of King George I in the corners and spine panels.

Born of Thomas Cranmer's desire for liturgical texts upon which all of Europe's Protestant, English-speaking churches could agree, the beautiful and dignified language of the Book of Common Prayer, first issued in 1549, has considerably influenced not only ecclesiastical practice but also literature in English. "The language of the Prayer Book is now part of the whole language… and as a source of spiritual inspiration, it is for most Englishmen second only to the Bible" (PMM 75). This 1723 London edition is handsomely bound in full mottled calf, with King George I's gilt monogram cipher in each corner of the boards as well as in each spine panel. Ornamented with fine engraved frontispiece (dated 1710), decorative headpieces and woodcut initials. Griffiths 1723:1. A few ink corrections and marginal annotations.

A few short wormtraces; text clean. Evidence of cloth ties, corners expertly restored. A very handsome volume.