 |
Reprint Made Available Again This Classic Manual of Catholic-Minded Devotions (for Anglicans, Roman Catholics, et al.)
Albeit Anglican press Holy Cross Publications' "Saint Augustine's Prayer Book" primarily was intended for Anglicans of the Protestant Episcopal Church, it long has been of equal worth for all Anglicans and for Roman Catholic, Uniate, Old Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians, as well, and even in large part for Lutherans. Preservation Press in 1988 wisely chose to reprint the original 1947 first edition of this work, rather than the 1967 revision. Due to the scarcity of the reprint, some attention to the original edition of 1947 from Holy Cross Publications is in order, as well.
Due to Amazon's having followed the careless indication by the original publisher, Holy Cross Publications, of the this prayer manual's numerous mere printings as "editions" (and it was only in 1967 that a true revision, i.e. a revised, genuinely second, edition appeared), there are some rather inconsistent descriptions for various printings of the first edition of this devotional manual in various Amazon entries. Here is an ISBD citation of the original 1947 edition:
Saint Augustine's Prayer Book : a Book of Devotion for Members of the Episcopal [i.e. Protestant Episcopal] Church / compiled and edited by Loren Gavitt and Archie Drake ; Frank M. Butler, [partial] illustr[ator]. -- First ed. -- West Park, N.Y. : Holy Cross Publications, 1947. -- xii, 367 p. : ill. ; 14 cm.
The Amazon.com entry for the Preservation Press reprint is of the edition just described in my ISBD citation of it.
Like Preservation Press, obviously, I prefer this original 1947 edition (in whatever printing thereof) over the later slight revision of 1967, which has many fewer lovely illustrations. In the 1947 edition (and therefore in the 1988 Preservation Press reprint of it) there are, in addition to "Frank M. Butler['s] fourteen original pen and ink drawings illustrating the Stations of the Cross", numerous other woodcut-like illustrations. Also, the revision's form for self-examination before oral Confession is inferior to that of the original 1947 edition (and its 1988 reprint). However, alike the genuine 1947 first edition, Preservation Press' 1988 reprint of it, and the real 1967 second edition are marvellously useful for Christians of whatever Catholic persuasion. The Tudor-Stewart English, I would note, is gorgeously evocative and devout in its chaste piety.
I have used my 1947 edition (in its 1963 printing, cat. no. SP-6M-4-63) for 46 years, daily (since 1963 to, as of now, 2009), from the time that I was a teenaged sailor right up into retirement as an old man, and I never have tired of it. I long have had resort to a wide variety of guides and aids to piety, but this one is my favourite (and the most compact in size), although two other devotional manuals also have become particularly important to me in my daily prayer life, namely "A Prayer Book for Orthodox Christians" (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1987; ISBN 0-943405-01-7) and "The Manual of Prayers, Authorized by the [Roman Catholic] Hierarchy of England and Wales for Congregational Use (New Edition; London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1953).
May the "Saint Augustine's Prayer Book" and other fine devotional guides of the 19th and early to middle 20th centuries never become too scarce for a Christian to acquire readily for faithful and perpetual use!
|
|
|
