As well as being two of the most famous prose works of English literature, Jeremy Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying are among the greatest examples of Anglican spirituality. This is the first critical and fully annotated edition since the Oxford Movement began, over 150 years ago. The texts are based on the first editions of 1650 and 1651, collated with those editions published during Taylor's lifetime. The critical apparatus includes textual variants, a full commentary, and a textual introduction. The general introduction to both volumes sets out Taylor's life and the intellectual background of these devotional and literary classics.

Jeremy Taylor's profile page

P.G. Stanwood's profile page

P. G. Stanwood is at University of British Columbia.

'There is much here for which the modern reader has cause to be grateful.' Isabel Rivers, St Hugh's College, Oxford, Notes and Queries, March 1992

'It is a delight ... to see him in his newest dress, tactfully and accurately edited.' Paul Hartle, Country Life

'P.G. Stanwood has presented us with a reliable text based upon scrupulous collation of all the editions published during Taylor's lifetime ... Holy Living is in every way an achievement equal to that of Holy Dying; the two treatises are counterparts, each excellent in its kind. We can be grateful to this new edition for increasing our appreciation of a major writer of English prose and a major defender of the potential for good in human nature.' Louis L. Martz, Yale University, Modern Philology

'The publisher and printers have given the volumes an elegance and an accuracy to match the editor's learning.' Geoffrey F. Nuttall, Journal of Ecclesiastical History

'It is P.G.Stanwood's inestimable service to have enabled readers to appreciate the richness of Taylor's text and of his rhetorical stratagies by granting them for the first time full access to Taylor's cultural store. To the benefit of a carefully edited text he adds detailed and comprehensive bibliographical annotation for all Taylor's allusions, ...' Christina Malcolmson, Yearbook of English Studies.

'It is good that we have a proper scholarly edition of Taylor's Holy Living and Holy Dying. Stanwood has provided us with very sound, scholarly, and careful editions of two of the most popular devotional manuals of the seventeenth century. These are very sound editions and ones we have long needed.' William Proctor Williams, Northern Illinois University, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 4/92