Kempis, Thomas à: Rowe, Elizabeth Singer, ed.:

$4,000 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

THE CHRISTIAN PATTERN, OR THE IMITATION OF JESUS CHRIST BEING AN ABRIDGEMENT OF THE WORKS OF THOMAS A KEMPIS. By a Female Hand. One of the earliest works of Catholic Americana, and the first American edition of any work by Kempis, this work consists of selections from the exceedingly important Imitation of Christ, "the most widely read devotional manual apart from the Bible, perhaps even surpassing the influence of such books as Pilgrim's Progress and St. Augustine's Confessions" (Printing and the Mind of Man). Published by the first German (and notably Protestant) printer in America, Christopher Saur, Evans identifies the "female hand" who composed the abridgment as the English writer Elizabeth Singer Rowe.

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