In 1928 Daniel Berkeley Updike and his Merrymount Press won a competition to produce the Standard Book of the 1928 U. S. Book of Common Prayer. The Standard Book was intended to be the one to which all other printings were to be compared for accuracy. Updike was an obvious choice for this task: he was a life-long Episcopalian (his ancestors in Rhode Island included Episcopal clergy) and so knew the church and its liturgy, he was a prominent printer of books and other items of the highest quality, and he had already, early in his career, printed the Standard Edition of the 1892 BCP. The book which resulted is regarded as one of the classics of American book design.

Joseph Blumenthal, in The Printed Book in America, has this to say about the book:

The high point of Updike’s career as a designer and printer was the completion in 1930 of The Book of Common Prayer. . . According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. His specimen pages were chosen, from among those invited from four printers, by the Church’s Commission on Revision. The whole undertaking was financed by J. Pierpont Morgan. “It was an enormous task,” wrote Updike, “and one which taxed our resources in many different directions, but in which what knowledge I had of the history of a Church to which my family have been for nearly three hundred years adherents, and of the liturgical requirements and practical use of the Prayer Book stood me in good stead. . . . The book was begun in 1928 and was finished in the autumn of 1930.” Without decoration, except a typographic leaf, initial letters, and rubrication, this is an austere and handsome quarto. Five copies were printed on vellum. The edition is a superb example of American craftsmanship and an abiding tribute to all concerned in its production.