Books in print and available
Please note that prices are given in $ only, but for British customers payment in £ by BACS is welcome at the current exchange rate. Economical payment in Euros can also usually be arranged. Please ask.
An amulet for the binding of guns, spears, swords, daggers and all implements of war. Syriac text edited and translated by Erica C. D. Hunter. With one hand-coloured illustration reproduced from the manuscript in the John Rylands Library, Manchester.
Oxford 1992.
200 copies on Zerkall paper, in a paper wrapper. The Syriac text is printed in Drugulin's Nestorian Syriac.
$14
Captain Kidd and two others. Verses from A book of Americans by Stephen Vincent Benét illustrated with wood-engravings by Nancy Ruth Jackson.
10 pp. Paper, Oxford 1997. 150 copies on Zerkall paper. Types: Monotype Octavian and Albertus. ISBN 0 9511627 8 0.
$27
The Epistle of secrets. Translated from the Latin by Rodney G. Dennis and edited by J. F. Coakley.
Iii + 44 pp. Cased. Oxford 1998. Types: Monotype Joanna, with Hebrew words in Stam and Monotype Mayer, the latter having its first showing here., 150 copies on Zerkall paper, of which 90 are for sale. ISBN 0 9511627 9 9.
The Epistle of Secrets is one of the earliest texts of Christian kabbalah, and the first to be printed, in 1487 or 8. We have it only in a Latin translation from the Hebrew - or perhaps it is an original composition - by Paulus de Heredia, a Jewish Christian convert and supposed teacher of Pico della Mirandola. In spite of its importance, the Epistle has never been reprinted, and this is its first translation into any modern language.
$40
Elementale quadrilingue: a philological type-specimen (Zürich 1654). Repro-duced with a commentary by John Huehnergard, Geoffrey Roper, Alan D. Crown and the editor J. F. Coakley.
13 pp. Cased, 33 x 23 cm. 2005. Types: Monotype Walbaum and various founders' types in the relevant languages from the Jericho Press collection. Paper: Zerkall mould-made. One hundred copies.
In 1654 the Zürich printer J. J. Bodmer published a broadside entitled Elementale quadrilingue, supposedly a guide to reading Samaritan, Arabic, Hebrew, and Syriac, by the famous Johann Heinrich Hottinger; but really, not so much a work of philology as a specimen of types newly made by the punchcutter Balthasar Köblin who was then working for him. This type-specimen survives in a perhaps unique copy in Houghton Library, unrecorded until lately. Our edition includes a same-size facsimile, with commentary devoted to Hottinger and to the three new types (Arabic, Syriac, and Samaritan).
$60
The story of the holy Mar Pappos and 24000 who were martyred with him. Syriac text from a Cambridge manuscript, with short introduction and English translation by J. F. Coakley.
iii + 38pp. Cased. 2017. Type: Monotype Perpetua. Paper: Mohawk Superfine.
This purports to be the story of a Roman general and his 24,000 Christian soldiers who were martyred in a town near Antioch in the year 309. The story is, to all appearances, of no historical value at all, and it borrows much of its substance from the old Edessene martyrdoms of Shmona, Guria and Habbib. But the Syriac is, at least, straightforward and easy to read. The text is here printed in the estrangela font designed by F. C. Burkitt in 1899 (last used by us for The Church's bridal feast (1992 and long out of print).
$45
St Hilda of Whitby. A cantata by Wendy Cope. With a wood-engraved frontispiece by Andy English.
5 pp., 28 cm. In paper wrappers. 2018. Types: Monotype Ehrhardt and Albertus. Paper: Zerkall mould-made. Eighty copies.
The story of the 7th-century St Hilda, Abbess of Whitby, and Caedmon, the herdsman who sang his hymn for her, is told by Bede, Hist. eccl. 4.24. It is the subject of Wendy Cope's cantata, written for the 125th anniversary celebrations of St Hilda's College, Oxford in February 2018.
$20
The Greek types of the Jericho Press. A specimen with notes by J. F. Coakley.
A companion volume to The Hebrew types published in 2010. The Jericho Press collection includes most of the Monotype Greeks in academic use, as well as Proctor's famous type of 1903 and 'Alexandrian' and 'Sussex' uncials (the latter perhaps never before shown). Along with the specimen showings, the book includes some previously unpublished information on the history of Monotype New Hellenic, and of Will Carter's Greek type designed (but never produced) for the Cambridge University Press.
22 pp. Cased, 25 x 16 cm. Sixty numbered copies, 2014.
$50
Six Syriac hymns with their English versions and music. Edited by the printer.
A very small number of Syriac hymns have found their way into English hymnbooks. This is an edition of six (of which only one is likely to be at all familiar to those who sing hymns), printed in various Syriac types in the Jericho Press collection, with their translations and tipped-in images (from hymnbooks) of the music.
27 pp. on Zerkall mould-made paper. The types are Syriac (estrangela, serto, and eastern) and Monotype Ehrhardt. August 2019. Forty numbered copies of which thirty are in blue cloth, and ten (now sold) are in quarter leather and Japanese decorated paper.
In cloth. A few copies remain. $32
The feast of Epiphany: a gift of the Syriac church. By J. F. Coakley. A Christmas book for 2020.
The date 6 January for the feast of Epiphany derives from some ingenious biblical exegesis. This exegesis can be plausibly traced to Syriac sources of the fourth century.
6 pp. on Zerkall mould-made paper. One hundred copies, sewn into paper wrappers.
$12
Amphilochius of Iconium: the opening of his homily on 'My Father who sent me is greater than I'. Syriac text with translation and introduction by J. F. Coakley. 2021.
Amphilochius, who lived in the late fourth century, was the author of a small number of homilies in Greek, some of them in defence of the orthodoxy of Nicaea against Arian opponents. One such homily, lost in the original, is preserved in Syriac translation in a single manuscript. Even in this manuscript the first two leaves of the homily were lost; but these, it turns out, were in the possession of the 'Sisters of Sinai' Mrs Lewis and Mrs Gibson. They are now identified and their text is here published.
16 pp. on Zerkall mould-made paper. Forty numbered copies. The Syriac type is Oxford's pica large face estrangela. Printed and bound in chiyogami decorated paper boards at the Jericho Press.
$50
A hymn by J. A. Rothe with its English translation by John Wesley.
German text of the hymn 'Ich habe nun den Grund gefunden' in 10 stanzas, with the 6 stanzas of Wesley's translation and a short introduction by J. F. C. 2021.
10 pp. on Rives lightweight. Forty copies. The German text is set in Paul Duensing's Dürer fraktur, Wesley's translation in Joanna. In stiff card wrappers.
$20
A book of family graces. Third edition, revised and enlarged. With a frontispiece by Jane Lydbury.
21 pp. landscape, 2022. Sixty copies on T. H. Saunders laid paper. Types: Monotype Joanna, plus Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, German fraktur, plainchant, etc. Bound in Japanese red cloth as shown.
The format of this third edition is the same as the second of 2006. Almost all the graces (though re-set) are kept from the old edition, including two for part-singing (one shown above). Several English graces have been added, along with two in Latin and a longer one in Hebrew.
$50
Ruthless rhymes by Harry Graham.
Seven incorrect verses by Harry Graham (1874-1936), including two of the original illustrations (one shown above) by Ridgewell.
12 pp. small landscape (10 x 16 cm.), 2022. Seventy copies on Zerkall paper. The verses are set in Rudolf Koch's Marathon type. In a wrapper of Mohawk 'denim' paper.
$20
Mr. Vlasov meets the Ham King: a tale of Harvard and Codex Suprasliensis by Rodney G. Dennis.
'In 1967, Mr. Vlasov, the hero of this narrative, came into my office at the Houghton Library, placed Codex Suprasliensis on my desk, and said he could let me have it for $20,000.' So begins Rodney Dennis's story. Harvard could not buy this famous Church Slavonic manuscript, which was evidently stolen from a Polish collection, but could they save it from being dismembered and dispersed? They could, with help from the king of Polish hams.
17 pp. octavo, on Mohawk Superfine paper, 2022. The text is set in Rudolf Koch's Marathon type, with Introduction by the printer in Monotype Perpetua and Old Bulgarian.
Bound in fine-grained red cloth at the Campbell-Logan bindery.
Seventy-six copies in full cloth, numbered 3-78 $70
Copies nos. 1-2 in quarter black leather and the same cloth $200
Any of the above books may be ordered from the Jericho Press by e-mail or by post.
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You may also like:
F. F. Irving, Among the Assyrian Christians: Sketches of life in Persia 1893-1898. Edited with an introduction by J. F. Coakley. 2021. Paperback, 147 pp.
Irving was a member of the Archbishop of Canterbury's Assyrian Mission, and spent the time of his service in a remote Christian village in NW Persia. He wrote lively sketches of his life there and that of the local people in the mission's quarterly magazine, and these sketches are here collected with a historical and geographical introduction.
$9.99
This book, printed from the editor's pdf file (not at the Jericho Press), is published jointly with Atour Publications and can be ordered at lulu.com. To order please go to:
https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/atourpub
.