ST. DOMINIC’S PRESS. GILL, Eric. ~ Horae Beatae Virginis Mariae Juxta Ritum Sacri Ordinis Praedicatorum Jussu Editae.
12 wood-engravings by Eric Gill and two by Desmond Chute, several pages of musical notation, printed in red and black throughout. One of only 220 copies. Large 4to., 29.2 x 22.2 cms, original linen boards. Slight browning and a few marks to spine and edges of the linen, very crisp and clean internally.
An extremely attractive printing of the Little Office of Our Lady according to the Dominican rite with plainchant notation between red staves. Printed mainly for use by Dominican novices at Woodchester Priory, it was also used by the Dominican tertiaries on Ditchling Common.
Stanley Morison wrote about it in his ‘English Prayer Books’ (1943) when he notes it was “a fine quarto printed in red and black and gives the complete chant. The hours are distinguished by wood-engravings cut by Eric Gill...the best example I have seen of English liturgical-music printing”
Ownership gift inscription to the academic bibliophile Cosmo Alexander Gordon from “A.T.B.” This was Augustus Theodore Bartholomew, another Cambridge bibliophile, who with Gordon and Geoffrey Keynes created a distinguished ‘salon’ of book lovers around Gustave David’s Cambridge market book stall.