Books of Common Prayer at Cushing Memorial Library and Archives - Part Two
By Courtney Price | 01-20-2022
This is Part Two of an article discussing Books of Common Prayer (BCP) held at the Texas A&M University Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. Here, we focus on the Library’s recent acquisition, an original 1662 BCP. Please read Part One of this article to learn about other editions: the 1608 “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” a 1660 edition, and facsimiles of the 1637 and 1662 editions.
Book of Common Prayer, 1662
(Cushing Library/Rare Books/Call Number: BX5145 .A4 1662b)
The Cushing Library’s most recent Book of Common Prayer (BCP) acquisition is a large, leather-bound 1662 edition. Perhaps its most interesting physical feature is the insertion of five pages replacing the missing orders for morning and evening prayer. Though the text appears to be from the same edition, the inserted pages are much smaller than the rest of the book. One could speculate that the original pages fell out because they were used very frequently, making their replacement all the more necessary.
Though this edition shares much in common with the Victorian facsimile (produced in 1844 by William Pickering) there is a noticeable attempt to shrink the print size of the original in order to save space in the facsimile. Unfortunately, this means that some of the original’s theatricality is removed. In the original’s prefatory pages, there is a reprint of the “Act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer” issued by Elizabeth, followed directly by a similar declaration issued by Charles II, “Act for the Uniformity of Publick Prayers.” The title of both proclamations is enormous in comparison to the body text, and they are positioned in such a way that no reader can miss the presentation style shared between the two texts. This effect is lost in the Victorian reprint, which significantly decreases the title print size (please see Part One of this article for a discussion of this facsimile). Also missing are the printer’s ornaments from the original, important for their political imagery. The authentic 1662 edition features icons signifying the countries over which England claimed dominion: a rose for England, a thistle for Scotland, a fleur-de-lis for France, and a harp for Ireland. While less obvious, the ornament above Charles II’s declaration clearly depicts the Scottish thistle joined with the rose of England, the French fleur-de-lis between them. None of this imagery is replicated in the Victorian edition, replaced with a smaller ornament that is merely decorative.
Another interesting difference is the use of red lettering throughout the Victorian facsimile, where it only appears in the calendar of the original. This suggests that the publishers of the facsimile may have been looking at more fully-decorated editions for their design, or that they felt the discontinuation was an error of style. In the original, this suggests a marketing tactic to help sell the book without increasing its cost. If a potential buyer were flipping through the beginning of the book, they may buy it based on the presentation without realizing that it does not continue throughout.
The edition discussed in this article is available at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives. Please read Part One of this article to learn about other editions: the 1608 “Queen Elizabeth’s Prayer Book,” a 1660 edition, and facsimiles of the 1637 and 1662 editions.
Courtney Price served as Kelsey Fellow at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives in 2021. Named in honor of distinguished former student Dr. Mavis P. Kelsey ‘32 and his wife Mary Wilson Kelsey, the Kelsey Fellowship is a non-teaching assistantship administered jointly by the English Department and the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives and provides the opportunity for a graduate student to work in Texas A&M’s special collections library.
Tags: Book of Common Prayer (BCP); Cushing Memorial Library and Archives; Texas A&M University.
Cushing Memorial Library and Archives Collections: Rare Books Collection.
Contact Us: cushingcollective@library.tamu.edu
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Courtney Price is an English PhD candidate at Texas A&M University, studying early modern devotional literature in England. Her dissertation examines the cross-confessional significance of Reformation and Counter-Reformation hermeneutics with the phenomenology of reading. She served as Kelsey Fellow at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives in 2021. |