The Christian Year; Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holydays Throughout the Year
London: Methuen & Co., 1898. 12 mo. (7 inches tall), original vellum with yapped fore-edges, gilt titles to spine and front board, ribbon ties and ribbon marker, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt, uncut. Mild foxing to uncut edges, lacking rear ribbon tie, slight crease to lower corner. A nearly-fine copy. Item #1803
"SUN OF MY SOUL, THOU SAVIOUR DEAR / IT IS NOT NIGHT IF THOU BE NEAR"
Late Victorian edition of John Keble's poetic meditations on the Book of Common Prayer—bound in yapped vellum and illustrated with five monochrome designs by R. Anning Bell. A bright, fresh copy with partially unopened pages.
The Christian Year follows the liturgical calendar of the English Church, "with its poems built around the festivals and fasts and services of the Book of Common Prayer" (Geoffrey Rowell). Keble began writing poems on the Sundays of the English calendar as early as 1819. "Keble intended his verses not for the congregation but for the soul at his bedside" (Owen Chadwick) so he was ambivalent about their value, and the book was first published anonymously in June 1827. "Keble's method was to build on a text from one of the readings of the day and draw out the symbolism both of Scripture and the natural order" (Rowell). The initial success of the book was puzzling to Keble as he still thought the poems were overrated. "Newman, not yet intimate with Keble, leaped far more quickly into praise. He instantly thought the poems quite exquisite" (Owen Chadwick).
The Christian Year was immensely and broadly popular, published in dozens of editions and selling hundreds of thousands of copies throughout the Victorian era. "The expressions of a romantic age here entered Christian devotion, and the evangelical love of hymnody began to pass into the affections of more traditional English churchmen." Printed in red-and-black, this second Methuen edition included five illustrations by Bell: 1. Christmas, 2. Ash-Wednesday, 3. Easter, 4. Go To the World, 5. Catechism. The work brought about a new appreciation for the symbol and imagery of the Prayer Book and "the devout among the Anglican middle classes came to value it as dissenters valued Pilgrim's Progress" (Chadwick). Geoffrey Rowell, The Vision Glorious: Themes and Personalities of the Catholic Revival in Anglicanism. Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church.
Price: $200.00