All Glory; Brush Drawing Meditations on the Prayer of Consecration
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Society of Saint John the Evangelist, 1947. First edition. Octavo, original blue pebbled blue cloth, gilt front board, original pictorial dust jacket. Book fine, original dust jacket with faint red stains (the ink used in printing frequently ran or offset, this copy is no exception), several short tears. A near-fine copy. Item #1308
"ALL GLORY BE TO THEE, ALMIGHTY GOD, OUR HEAVENLY FATHER"
First edition of these stunning "meditations on the Prayer of Consecration," illustrated throughout by Allan Rohan Crite—"the best-known artist in the Episcopal Church"—and published in Boston by the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. Complete with the original illustrated dust jacket, this copy is inscribed by Crite: "To Alasdair from Allan R. Crite ARC 1979."
The Society of Saint John the Evangelist, founded at Oxford in 1866 by Richard Meux Benson, arrived in Boston shortly thereafter and still maintains a monastery in Cambridge and a retreat house in West Newbury, Massachusetts. All Glory is entirely illustrated by the great Boston artist, Allan Rohan Crite, who prepared 16 black-and-white captioned plates capturing the drama and mystery of the Consecration. "'I am a liturgical artist,' Mr. Crite, who was Episcopalian, liked to say. Indeed, for many years he supplemented his income by providing artwork for the weekly bulletins of Episcopal and Catholic parishes in several states. When Christ Church Episcopal in Bronxville, N.Y., dedicated a stained-glass window in Mr. Crite's honor in 1994, it lauded him as 'the best-known artist in the Episcopal Church'" (Mark Feeney, the Boston Globe). A brief Foreword—the only printed leaf in the book—describes the Prayer of Consecration in the American Book of Common Prayer and concludes: "The book has been produced as an act of homage to Christ, the Eternal Priest." The plates are followed by a charmingly illustrated appendix: a "Glossary of Terms."
Price: $500.00