"O LORD JESUS! MAY IT BE OUR PRIVILEGE ALSO TO BEAR THY CROSS; MAY WE GLORY IN NOTHING ELSE"

GILL, Eric, illustrator. The Way of the Cross. Text of the Devotion Traditional in the Catholic Church. Garden City, New York: Country Life Press, 1927. Octavo, contemporary full red morocco gilt, raised bands, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt; housed in a matching morocco-tipped slipcase. $1200.

Limited first American edition, one of 350 copies, with 15 illustrations by Eric Gill, including one on the title page not included in the English editions.

Gill converted to Catholicism in 1913, the same year he was approached by the architect-in-charge of London's Westminster Cathedral about sculpting the Stations of the Cross for the Mother Church of English Catholics. "For the next four years Gill was principally engaged in carving the fourteen panels called Stations of the Cross for Westminster Cathedral, the work which put him definitely in the front rank of contemporary English sculptors" (Donald Attwater, Eric Gill: Workman). After four years' work, Gill's designs for the limestone panels in the Cathedral were completed in the spring of 1918, just in time for the dedication on Good Friday.

Echoing Gills' sculpted designs, the Way of the Cross was first printed in 1917 by Gill's fellow convert, Hilary Douglas Clark Pepler at Ditchling, St. Dominic's Press. Prefaced by the Stabat Mater Dolorosa, there 14 wood-engravings are printed in Latin and English and captioned with the antiphon Adoramus Te ("We Adore Thee"). St. Dominic's Press printed four more editions before this first American edition was printed in a limited edition of 350 that includes an additional illustration—Agnes Redemit Oves—on the title page.

Mild fading to spine. Nearly fine condition.