The 1662 Book of Common Prayer (Baskerville)
The 1662 Book of Common Prayer is still the official Prayer Book of the Church of England and has gone through literally hundreds of printings. Of these, only a few stand out, chief among which are a series done by John Baskerville between 1760 and 1762. Baskerville was one of the giants of English typography, making a number of innovations, including the Baskerville typeface still in use today. His typefaces were finely constructed, his designs simple and spare, and made great use of white space. He also pioneered in developing fine papers for printing.
His printings of the Book of Common Prayer, done as printer at Cambridge University, came in three basic forms: single column, two column, and with or without lozenge border decorations. The edition presented here is single column, undecorated, and was printed in 1762. It appears in David Griffiths’ Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer as 1762/4, and is #19 in Phillip Gaskell’s bibliography of Baskerville’s works.
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Section titled “Downloads”References
Section titled “References”The electronic text is provided courtesy of the Society of Archbishop Justus. Web author: Charles Wohlers.