The Book of Common Prayer is not merely a manual of worship but one of the great monuments of English-speaking Christianity. Its cadences have shaped devotion for centuries; its prayers have steadied nations in crisis and comforted the faithful in private sorrow; its theology—clear, scriptural, and catholic—has formed the backbone of Anglican identity since the Reformation. Yet the Prayer Book did not appear fully formed, nor has it remained unchanged. It is the fruit of long struggle, careful scholarship, pastoral insight, and the lived experience of worshipping communities across generations This Everyman’s history sets out to tell that story with the same clarity and sympathy with which Percy Dearmer approached all his work. It traces the Prayer Book from the medieval rites that preceded it, through the genius of Cranmer’s first English liturgies, the upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the refinements that produced the beloved 1662 book. Along the way, readers will encounter the people, controversies, and ideals that shaped Anglican worship—its characteristic dignity, simplicity, and reverence. By including material on the American Prayer Book, this volume acknowledges that the Anglican liturgical tradition is both unified and diverse: a family of books sharing a common ancestry and theological heart, yet expressing that inheritance in forms suited to different peoples and times. Dearmer’s approachable style invites readers—whether scholars, clergy, or curious laypeople—to appreciate the Prayer Book as a living tradition, shaped by history but continually renewed in worship. Everyman’s History of the Prayer Book therefore offers more than a chronological survey. It is an invitation to understand how the Anglican way of prayer came to be, why it endures, and how its influence extends well beyond the English Church to the wider Anglican Communion. In attending to both the English and American developments, the reader is better equipped to see the richness, resilience, and international breadth of the Prayer Book tradition. English edition originally published by Mowbrays, London, 1912. CONTENTS: I. The Bible in the Prayer Book II. The Question of Set Forms of Prayer III. The Contents of the Prayer Book IV. The Development of Service Books V. The First Stages of Liturgical Change VI. The First English Prayer Book VII. The Reign of Anarchy and the Second Prayer Book VIII. The Elizabethan Prayer Book IX. The Fourth Prayer Book and the Authorized Version X. The Savoy Conference XI. The Fifth English Prayer Book XII. Morning and Evening Prayer XIII. The Litany XIV. The Holy Communion XV. Baptism, Catechizing, and Confirmation XVI. The Occasional Services and the Ordinal XVII. The American Prayer Book* Family Tree of the Prayer Book *From the American Edition.