| The development of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer was lengthy, taking over 25 years. It was documented by nearly 30 books and pamphlets, called "Prayer Book Studies". We present here the first series of these, Prayer Book Studies 1 through 16, published between 1950 and 1963.
These are all very moderate revisions of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. The older "Elizabethan" language was retained and changes from the 1928 BCP were relatively minor. None of the services were approved for actual use - they were all literally "studies", as the Church had not as yet created a mechanism for trial services. These books therefore show the first hesitant steps in Prayer Book revision. Perhaps their greatest importance, however, is in the introductions to the services, which are often extensive and cover the history and theology of each service. It is also hoped that they might be instructive as the Church begins another process of Prayer Book revision.
The links below lead to PDF files where the pages appear as graphics (as is done by Google Books and the Internet Archive). There is extractable text, but this text has not been proofread and undoubtedly contains some errors.
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