[ESSEX HOUSE PRESS],THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENTS, & OTHER RITES & CEREMONIES OF THE CHURCH, ACCORDING TO THE USE OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND; TOGETHER WITH THE PSALTER OR PSALMS OF DAVID. London: Printed at the Press of the Guild of Handicraft / Essex House Press, for Eyre & Spottiswoode. With the inserted supplement of eight pages, intended for American buyers. Half binding: pigskin and beveled wooden boards, with metal clasps and thong ties (most of the latter absent), untrimmed. Printed in red and black, with decorations and initials. Spine quite worn, chipped at crown and toe, front cover detached. C. R. Ashbee's Essex House edition of the Prayer Book of Edward VII, with some 150 woodcuts after drawings by Ashbee, executed by W.H. Hooper and Clemence Housman. One of 400 copies on paper (and ten on vellum), printed in the Endeavour and Prayer Book types designed by Ashbee. A magnificent book, even considering the condition in which this copy now presents itself -- (as often happens with this stout but surprisingly fragile binding). Tomkinson's bibliography of The Essex House Press suggests that only fifty copies of the inserts for America were printed. (see numbers 37 & 39). In the context of Jim Graham's collection, it may not be irrelevant to note that Ashbee was homosexual, and is thought to have been a member of the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society founded in 1897 by George Ives for the cultivation of a homosexual ethos. Asjbee set up the Essex House Press after Morris's Kelmscott Press closed in 1897, taking on many of the displaced printers and craftsmen.
PROVENANCE: Estate of Jim Graham, former Washington, DC, Councilman Estimate $300-500
