Saint George the Martyr; The Patron Saint of England
Dover: G.W. Grigg and Son, 1919. First edition. Original white paper boards (7 inches tall), front board decorated in red with gilt accent, uncut. Touch of soiling to boards, else a near-fine copy. Item #1703
"WE MUST, AS SAINT GEORGE DID, EVER SET BEFORE US THE IDEAL OF OUR FAITH—NOT THE FAITH OF AN HOUR, BUT THE FAITH OF ETERNITY"
First edition of this Life of St. George—the Patron Saint of England—with a beautifully illustrated title page and embossed binding printed in red. Printed by G.W. Grigg of Norfolk ("St. George's Press") and illustrated with a tissue-guarded frontispiece photograph of the Zebruggee memorial erected at Kent by the Admiral and the local branch of the Society of St. George. Scarce.
Published at the close of the Great War, this "short account" was inspired by the 1918 naval action against the German submarine pen at Zebruggee—which occurred on Saint George's Day. "Dedicated by special permission to Vice Admiral Sir Roger Keyes," this essay was intended "to be a guide to the vast number of English people who know nothing about our Saint." A commander of the British Navy's wartime Dover Patrol, G.F. Raggett meant to foster veneration of England's national Saint with a blended legacy of factual history and mythic legend. Raggett "endeavoured to unravel the knotted skein of fact and fiction, which for centuries has hidden from view the beautiful picture of a stainless life—heroic even to martyrdom." With an epigraph from Spenser's The Fairie Queene ("And on his breast a bloodie Crosse he bore / The dear remembrance of his dying Lord"). The author's brief prefatory note (dated, "All Saints' Day, 1918") pledges to donate the proceeds to a Dover Patrol Flotilla fund inaugurated by the Mayor of Dover.
Price: $100.00