One of the largest private collections of the Book of Common Prayer is now available for scholarly use at Virginia Theological Seminary. An Easter Week announcement about the Canon J. Robert Wright estate’s Book of Common Prayer collection marked the first news about the collection since Canon Wright’s death in early 2022. The 65 banker’s boxes of the collection arrived in Alexandria on April 11.
Canon Wright’s 62 years on the General Theological Seminary close in New York marked a period of intense focus in American liturgical bibliophilia as he acquired notable books from the full range of Anglican history. He also collected secular literature; Russian, Greek, Serbian, and Romanian icons; and many titles related to the history of Christian art. He was elected a member of the prestigious Grolier Club of New York in 1996.
Wright’s secular books were donated to Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library in 2000 at the invitation of his friend Kenneth A. Lohf (1925-2002). Lohf was a long-term vestryman at St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, where Canon Wright was for many years honorary priest associate.
With high-profile roles as St. Mark’s in the Bowerie Professor of Ecclesiastical History (1971-2022) and canonical historiographer of the Episcopal Church (2000-12), Canon Wright had uncommon access to institutional collections as they closed, and a keen eye for what was rare and necessary to salvage from them.
Wright was also a first point of review for alumni collections as they reached the seminary on the retirement or death of former students. When a copy duplicated General’s already vast holdings, it was sometimes added to his personal collection, given to a student or friend, or donated to the New York Public Library, of which he was a longtime patron.
Wright’s collection was crucial as he prepared his magnum opus, Prayer Book Spirituality: A Devotional Companion to the Book of Common Prayer Compiled from Classical Anglican Sources (Church Publishing, 1989).
Wright’s private collection was a major research source for David Griffiths in his Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, 1549-1999 (British Library Board, 2002). This project — funded by Queen Elizabeth II; Archbishop George Carey; Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold; St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue; and the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church — aimed to provide a bibliographic record for every edition, printing, and translation of the Book of Common Prayer during its first 450 years.
Wright’s collection was a key component of a seven-month exhibition at General Seminary (see But One Use: An Exhibition Commemorating the 450th Anniversary of the Book of Common Prayer, May 17-December 18, 1999 (St. Mark’s Library).
The first opportunity for open scholarly access to this liturgical collection comes as VTS welcomes 6,500 rare books and 13 archival collections from General’s Keller Library. Those items remain the property of General, but the Wright Collection has never been available before in any library and is an entirely new field of public inquiry. More than 20,000 rare imprints, and all of the reference and circulating collections at General Seminary, remain in New York.
The Bishop Payne Library’s acquisitions come after the rescue in 2022 of over 12,000 pages of bound Tractarian and Ritualist pamphlets on eBay that were first collected by Philadelphia Divinity School (closed 1974) and Episcopal Divinity School (residential degrees ended in 2017).
Virginia Seminary also has announced the March appointment of the Rev. Dr. Joseph Thompson as seminary librarian, and the Rev. Dr. Mitzi Budde’s retirement in December as head librarian and the Arthur Carl Lichtenberger Chair in Theological Research. Dr. Budde oversaw a $12 million library renovation project, the movement of a 210,000-book collection into digital offerings, and the launch of the African American Episcopal Historical Collection in 2003.
