Thomas Traherne (1637-1674), a clergyman of the Church of England during the Restoration, was little known until the early twentieth century, when his poetry and Centuries of Meditations were first printed. There have beensince only miscellaneous publications of his poetry and devotional writings fully edited, a gap which The Works of Thomas Traherne will remedy by bringing together Traherne’s extant works, including his notebooks, in a definitive, printed edition for the first time.
Volume IV makes available a single manuscript book held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, never before published, the Church’s Year-Book, Meditations and Devotions from the Resurrection to All Saints’ Day, a work of celebration for the establishment and subsequent expansion of the universal Church and for the re-established Church of England. Also included is the anonymous devotional book that servedas the key to the initial identification of Traherne’s manuscripts, A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of GOD, in Several Most Devout and Sublime Thanksgivings for the Same, first printed in 1699 and commonly referred to as the Thanksgivings . Both are works of universal appeal, learning and insight that show Traherne to be engaged in the central issues of his age and are essential reading for students not only of Traherne but also of seventeenth-century theological, liturgical and devotional literature. Printed in the Appendix is Meditations on the Six Days of the Creation, a work of questionable attribution to Traherne, as well as William T. Brooke’s account of the discovery of Traherne’s manuscripts, The Story of the Traherne MSS. By their finder , held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and published for the first time.