[QUEEN ELIZABETH’S PRAYER BOOK] A Booke of Christian Praiers, Collected out of the Ancient Writers, and Best Learned in our Time, Worthy to be Read with an Earnest Mynde of all Christians, in these Daungerous and Troublesom Daies

Bound in an attractive limp pigskin binding adorned with faded gilt tooling and a blind double fillet. External straps along spine folds and new ties. The upper cover has been reinforced with a card lining that bears a bookplate from 1977 on the verso: ‘This book belongs to Hazel Agnes Formby’. The text lacks the first 8 leaves, including the general title page which precedes ‘The Preface or Preparation for Prayer’ (B1), continuing: ff1-17 [lacking 18-19] ff20-57 [58-9] ff60-92 [93-99] ff110-128, lacking the final 8 leaves of text and 2 leaves of contents. In all 118 leaves of text are present; these show old staining throughout; a couple of leaves have old pencil annotation; there is a wormtrail close to the gutter at the tail of leaves ff104-8. Both paper and binding remains robust and the book is perfectly usable.

The glory of this publication - effectively a Protestant Book of Hours - lies in its spectacular woodcut page borders, heavily decorated with abstract designs and many, many figures, some of which were based upon works by Albrecht Dürer and Hans Holbein. These illustrate the life of Christ, virtue, sin, the five senses and the Dance of Death, effectively a catalogue of Christian iconography. It was in 1569 that John Day printed the first Christian Prayers and Meditations, apparently for Queen Elizabeth herself, issuing a more accessible edition a decade later. There were further reissues in 1581, 1590 and this one from 1608, the fifth and final quarto edition.