SAINT DOMINIC’S PRESS. ~ Lectiones ad matutinum officii defunctorum: juxta ritum sac. ord. praed. Necnon orationes ad processionem post missam pro defunctis.
One of around 200 copies printed, although Pepler did write in a letter “I have decided to withdraw it from my list and destroy all but about 20 copies”, it would seem that there are slightly more than 20 in existence but it is indeed a rare item. 15 wood engravings by Eric Gill [including all bar one of his 14 Stations of the Cross engravings], plus one by an unidentified artist. 5 pages of plainsong notation with staves printed in red. Printed throughout in red and black on uncut handmade paper. Folio, (26 x 33 cms), bound in later full linen with S. Dominic’s device by Gill reproduced and stamped in brown on upper cover. A very good, unopened and untrimmed copy.
The Matins from Office for the Dead is one of the rarest of St. Dominic’s Press and Gill items. The lessons are read in the morning prior to a Requiem Mass and burial. The book follows this with a plainsong rendering of the Libera me and Requiem Aeternum from the Requiem mass usually sung on the way to the grave after the Requiem Mass and the words said during the burial.
There is a beautiful earthiness to the printing, Pepler describing it as “my best and worst in one book” (letter in a copy in G.F. Sims catalogue 65, 1966). The plainsong printing and the Gill wood engravings being particularly successful.