Archive list of books now out of print
W.A. Wigram: A fragment of autobiography, edited by J. F. Coakley. 9 pp. with a line illustration. Lancaster, 1985.
Saint Ephrem: A Hymn on the Eucharist (Hymns on Faith, no. 10), edited and translated by Sebastian Brock. Lancaster, 1986.
Types: Oxford large Estrangela Syriac, and Monotype Garamond.
Synopsis of the oriental and some other non-Latin types in use at the Press of J. F. Coakley. Broadside, Lancaster, 1990.
The Church's bridal feast. A Syriac hymn for Epiphany. Edited from the Syriac Orthodox Fenqitho, and translated, by Sebastian Brock. 14 pp. Oxford 1992.
Types: Cambridge small estrangela (designed after the handwriting of F. C. Burkitt) and Monotype Garamond. ISBN 0 9511627 2 1.
Lancelot Andrewes, Preces privatae. The introductions to each day’s prayers in Greek. Edited with an English translation by David Scott, with a wood-engraved frontispiece by Jane Lydbury. 23pp. Oxford 1993.
150 copies.
Types: Robert Proctor’s famous ‘Otter’ Greek type (on which see Matrix 13 (1993), 179-89), and Monotype Octavian. ISBN 0 9511627 4 8.
Family graces. With an appendix of scholarly graces. First edition. 19 pp. Cased. Oxford 1994.
One hundred copies.
The 'scholarly graces' include texts in Hebrew, Latin, Greek, and Syriac.
ISBN 0 9511627 5 6.
An ancient colophon : a memoir by William Cureton. Edited by J. F. Coakley. i + 13 pp. Oxford 1999.
75 copies. Cureton's description of how he encountered the most famous of Syriac manuscripts (British Library Add. 12,150), the oldest dated codex manuscript in any language. The text is re-edited from Cureton's book The festal letters of Athanasius (1848) with some additional notes.
The Harvard B.A. degree diploma 1813-2000, by J. F. Coakley. 11 pp., large oblong format, cased, in a box including six specimen diplomas. Oxford 2000.
Fifty copies. Types: Octavian, Ehrhardt, Dartmouth.
This book was printed by the Jericho Press for the Harvard College Library.
The collects of the first English prayer book 1549 by Thomas Cranmer, edited by J. F. Coakley; with an introduction by Geoffrey Hill and a wood-engraved frontispiece by Jane Lydbury. 6 + 89 pp., cased. Oxford 2002.
Fifty copies printed for subscribers.
This edition reproduces the text of the collects, in large type, from the Houghton Library copy of the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. After each collect is the Latin original, if any, and a note about its transmission in the 1662 prayer book and in the current American Book of Common Prayer and English Common Worship.
O sacred head: a Passiontide hymn. Words and music, with an introduction by John W. Coakley, Thomas S. Hansen, Carl D.N. Klein, and the editor J. F. Coakley; with a wood-engraving by Simon Brett. 11 + 8 pp., quarto, cased, 2003.
Sixty copies, mostly for subscribers.
The introduction discusses the famous hymn of Paul Gerhardt O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden; its thirteenth-century Latin original; the musical settings of the German hymn; and its English translations. There follow four different musical settings of the hymn, below which are the complete German text and the English translations of James W. Alexander and Robert Bridges. These pages are cut horizontally so that any of the musical settings may be paired with any of the versions.
Archimedes, On floating bodies I. 1-2. Greek text edited with an English translation by N. G. Wilson. 14 pp., quarto, cased, 2004.
Fifty copies, most of which were regrettably lost when the Press moved to Ely.
Greek text (Latin when the Greek is absent) and facing English translation of the opening of this treatise. The editor Nigel Wilson is one of a team of scholars who worked on a palimpsest manuscript rediscovered in 1998, and this was the first-fruit of their project of a new edition. Part of the Greek text had not been previously read, and therefore of this passage ours is a FIRST EDITION of Archimedes in Greek.
Archimedes joins the short list of books ever printed in Proctor's Greek type (which includes Lancelot Andrewes, Preces Privatae, above).
Robert Furber, Popular English historical rhymer. 8 pp., 2006.
Thirty copies in marbled paper boards, printed for the family.
Robert Furber (great grandfather of Sarah) was a schoolmaster in Whitchurch, Shropshire. He composed this set of verses for his pupils to learn the names and dates of English sovereigns. Its special merit is that the dates are made memorable by being part of the rhyme-scheme. It was printed as a small pamphlet entitled Popular English Historical Rhymer in 1874, only one or two recorded copies of which survive.
A book of family graces. Second edition, revised and enlarged. 21 pp. landscape, 2006.
Sixty copies. Types: Monotype Joanna, plus Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac; also with some music.
The format of this second edition is the same as the first (1994, above). Almost all the graces (though re-set) are kept from the old edition. Several English graces have been added, along with two in Latin and a longer one in Hebrew. With two new wood-engravings by Jane Lydbury. Please now see the third edition in the 'available books' section of this website.
The Hebrew types of the Jericho Press. A specimen with notes by J. F. Coakley. 2010 . 25 pp. Cased, 2010.
Sixty numbered copies.
The Jericho Press accumulated Hebrew types, and Monotype matrices for Hebrew, over the years. This is a specimen of the types, adding some typographical history by the way to a subject that is little known.
Psalter collects. An introduction and sampler by Bridget Nichols. 12 pp., in a decorated paper cover, 24 cm. 2011.
Fifty copies. On the colophon page is a wood-engraving of Ely Cathedral by Andy English.
Types: Latin and English in Ehrhardt, with Albertus.
Psalter collects are Latin prayers composed for use at the end of the recitation of the Psalms. Three collections of these collects (Roman, African, and Spanish) survive in liturgical manuscripts of the ninth to the eleventh centuries. Bridget Nichols gives a short introduction to the three collections, and a sample of two collects from each with a commentary.
Brother Gregory, In praise of Ely. Translated by Janet Fairweather.16 pp. Cased, 2011.
One hundred copies.
Brother Gregory was a monk of Ely in the early twelfth century. His praise of Ely - its natural beauties as well as its abbey - is part of a Latin poem The Life and Miracles of St. Ætheldreda. The English translation by Janet Fairweather is illustrated with five wood-engravings by Andy English.
F. F. Irving, Easter in Ula, Salmas. 11 pp., cased. 2012.
Sixty copies.
Irving was an English missionary who lived among the Assyrian Christians in Persia in the 1890s. This is his description of Easter observances in the village of Ula in 1895.
A Heyrick bestiary. Poems on birds and animals by Thomas Heyrick, edited with an introduction by John Wells, and with five wood-engravings by Jane Lydbury. iv + 19 pp., 2013.
Sixty copies.
Thomas Heyrick was a parish priest in Harborough, Leicestershire, in the 1680s and 90s. As a poet he is best known for his poems on the natural world. This book collects all of his shorter poems on birds and animals - the first new edition of these poems since 1691.
Lyra catenata. Verses by A. N. L. Munby, edited with a preface by Liam Sims. v + 15 pp. 2015.
Eighty numbered copies.
A. N. L. ('Tim') Munby (1913-1974), Librarian of King's College, Cambridge and well-known bookman, was a prisoner of war in Germany from 1940 until 1945. His verses reflect the life of a POW in an officers' camp - not extremely oppressive, but tedious and frustrating. The verses, always cheerful and clever, were partly written for camp dramatic productions, and they must have helped keep up his own and others' spirits. Tim published nine of his poems privately in 1948 under the title Lyra catenata, 'a chained song', in an edition of 35 copies. The present edition reprints these nine and adds two more: one from a 1947 anthology, and another ('Augustus Stokes: a cautionary tale') by kind permission of the author's son Giles Munby from among the unpublished verses in his notebooks.
The collect in the eucharist and how to sing it. 15 pp. Cased. 2016.
Fifty numbered copies. The examples are printed in Deberny & Peignot's plainchant type acquired from the Stanbrook Abbey Press. With a frontispiece by Simon Brett.
Our third book on the Collects. If you attend the eucharist in an Anglican cathedral or Anglo-catholic church, you probably hear the priest chant the collect. But many priests do this somewhat ad lib and do not follow any of the correct historical 'tones' for this chant. They are set out here, and being easy to learn, will we hope be of use to some priests who aim at good practice, as well as of interest to a wider readership who may like to be informed about this liturgical subject.
A catalogue of the Syriac manuscripts in Cambridge University Library and college libraries acquired since 1901 by J. F. Coakley. vii + 212 pp. 2018. Fifty copies.
The last catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library was the great work of William Wright and S. A. Cook, published in 2 volumes in 1901. The present catalogue supplements Wright-Cook with a further hundred manuscripts acquired in the years since, including a few in college libraries. For a review see https://hugoye.bethmardutho.org/article/ hv26n1prcalabro
Although a publication of the Jericho Press, this book was printed from the author's pdf by Northend of Sheffield. (A letterpress production would have been an impossible project, and even if finished in my lifetime would not have had the advantages of precise typesetting offered by digital fonts or of colour illustrations. )
This book is now digitized (and corrected in a few places) and accessible on the University Library website: https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/mirador/PR-A-00233-00056/1
The Ship of the Fens: a gathering of wood-engravings of Ely Cathedral by Andy English. 20 pp. 2019.
Eighty copies. This collection is of 17 striking engravings of the Cathedral, the work of the engraver over many years of fascination with this building.
St Ephrem. A hymn on the Nativity (Hymns on the Nativity 11). Edited and translated by Sebastian Brock. 10 pp., 21 x 20 cm. In paper wrappers. 2019.
Thirty copies. A typically striking and paradoxical hymn of Ephrem. The text is set in the large bold estrangela type (S12 in my book The typography of Syriac) that we rejoice to have but have used all too seldom since Dr Brock's earlier edition and translation of Ephrem in 1986.
Jericho Press Types. A specimen of our types collected over 45 years. About 30 pp. loose leaf. 2023.
Six copies, none for sale.