by David Allen White
20 December 1999

'The Anglican Gradual and Sacramentary is something like the Anglican Missal. It provides the traditional anthems (sometimes called the minor propers) and special prayers and other texts, but it is designed to be used with the ECUSA 1979 Prayer Book, Lesser Feasts and Fasts, and the Book of Occasional Services.

What is in it? Propers for every day in the Church Year. Propers for every saint's day and fixed holy day. The Common of Saints. Episcopal and pastoral services. Votives and special occasions. Appendices tracing the history and usage of every anthem (more than 2000) with the original Latin (or in some cases Greek) text. Indexes of Scripture readings. An index of propers. It provides not only traditional language but contemporary English and Spanish.

Because of its size (it is 22 volumes and takes as much shelf space as the Encyclopedia Americana) it was not considered commercially marketable. I have spent the last nine years transcribing it into a computer. It is now complete and I have made one printed copy for the Library of Congress and I will make a limited number of others.

'The Anglican Gradual and Sacramentary', by being the work of a single individual, is more than slightly ideosyncratic. It represents what I know and have seen, and although I think my scholarship has been extensive, there will be others who will find parts of it peculiar.

After the first of the year I am planning to change the format slightly so that the four documents which constitute a single proper are combined into one document. As I make these format changes, I will be willing to transmit each document electronically to anyone who can receive it. The format is WordPerfect 6/7/8.

If you are interested and can receive attached files and can open and read them in that format, please send me your name and e-mail address and I will create a mailing list that these files will be transmitted to, as each one is completed.

If you are interested but cannot receive attached files, or cannot open them in that format, or have some other technical problem, that is something you will have to fix. Perhaps you can arrange with a friend, family member, or work colleague to receive the transmissions and save them to a file for you. I am not going to be able to make printed copies or to mail floppy disks or provide alternative formats.

If my plans fit in with yours, I would be glad to hear from you. This is about giving something away, and no money will be asked or accepted'.

Anglicans Online editorial comment: Wow. And thanks, David.