[WILKIE, James]. S. Brendan the Voyager and His Mystic Quest; Illustrated by Martin Travers. London: Society of SS. Peter and Paul, MCMXVI. [1916].
FIRST EDITION, hardcover, duodecimo (19.5cm x 13cm x 1cm), pp. 74. English text. Bound in original gilt-stamped tan paper-covered boards, uncut fore edge and bottom edge, half-title, illustrated throughout by Martin Travers, printed footnotes. Condition: GOOD. Neatly rebacked with new endpapers. A little rubbing to extremities. Interior very well-preserved and without previous owner markings. Scarce.
Notes: Rare Society of SS. Peter and Paul edition of the Navigatio Sancti Brendani—with a complete suite of the charming illustrations prepared by Martin Travers—to accompany James Wilkie's re-telling of the legends of Brendan's search for the Isle of the Blessed. An early Irish monastic saint, Brendan is one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. The Feast of Saint Brendan is celebrated on May 16. Brendan is venerated as the patron saint of mariners and sailors in the Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox traditions. S. Brendan the Voyager was published by The Society of SS. Peter and Paul, the Anglo-Catholic publishing house established in 1910 (on the premises of the Medici Society) for the original purpose of preparing liturgical works for the English Church. The SSPP provocatively embraced all things Baroque in order "to revolutionize Anglican taste...only the baroque at its most luxuriant could express the assertion that the Church of England was not a survival of the second year of Edward VI but a living part of the Catholic Church of Italy, Spain, and Latin America." (Evelyn Waugh). Illustrated by Travers with a frontispiece and matching title page, two additional color printed plates, smaller plates and captioned vignettes in black-and-white. Along with W.M.R. Quick, Martin Travers was responsible for developing the SSPP's distinctive aesthetic sense, exemplified here by the illustrated title page bearing the Society's lovely yellow-and-white colophon flanked by cherubs. The striking frontispiece, depicting the embarking of Saint Brendan and his companions at the outset of their legendary voyage across the North Atlantic, is captioned: "And then S. Brandon bade the shipman to wind up the sail and they sailed forth in God's Name that on the morrow they were out of sight of any land".
