Print, Popularity, and the Book of Common Prayer

Whatever a best-selling book was in the early modern period, the Book of Common Prayer is it. Ian Green in Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England has established a working criterion for a ‘steady selling’ book of five re-editions over a period of 30 years, starting either from an original appearance in print or a subsequent edition. ¹ Depending on how we define an imprint, there were perhaps 525 re-editions of the Book of Common Prayer in early modern England, of which 117 were in the reign of Elizabeth. ² Of the calendar years from 1558 to 1603, only 1593 and 1602 did not see a fresh imprint, judged by surviving copies; some years saw as many as six. In addition, print runs for the Book of Common Prayer were permitted to exceed the usual limits. At least 200,000 copies must have been printed in Elizabethan England, and many more remained in circulation from the reign of Edward VI. The only books to rival it were bibles and psalters, along with books of religious instruction such as The Christians ABC. This last text Green considers may have been the most reprinted item of all, with perhaps several imprints per year of upwards of 2,500 copies each. It was produced very cheaply, sold equally well, and was used so readily, indeed, that most copies do not survive. ³ Yet this text, too, can be seen as an ancillary of the Book of Common Prayer, containing as it did the catechism and many short prayers and biblical citations lifted straight from it. Many other catechistical books were abbreviated from the Book of Common Prayer, and other printings were made of liturgical lectionaries of collects and bible readings. Surviving copies of other widely reprinted texts like Geneva Bibles and Sternhold and Hopkins’s Metrical Psalter were often bound in with copies of the Book of Common Prayer, so that in terms of print run and dissemination it is even difficult to distinguish between them.