Navy cloth binding with gilt title on the spine. Black and gilt title and decoration on the front board.

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1892, 1st. Large Quarto. x, viii, 225, [3], xxxvi, 316, xxxii, 350-362, [2]pp. Extensively illustrated. Original blue cloth, decorative gilt and printed titles. Overall a ‘Very Good’ copy. Scarce.

The Ripon Millenary Festival was a pageant and festival held in Ripon over a week in August 1886, with the main activities concentrated on two days, to celebrate the supposed millenary of the granting of a royal charter to Ripon by Alfred the Great.

The background to the festival; The late 19th century saw a rise in interest in medieval history, and especially in the rituals of the Middle Ages. The rise of puritanism had led to the end of many medieval feast-days and rituals, but it was the industrial revolution, the cemented their loss, when many other aspects of the Puritan Revolution were reversed.

D’Arcey Ferris, who became the festival organiser, was a romantic interested in the revival of such medieval practices as the Yule log and Morris dancing, but this was only a part of the broader interest in the revival of lost traditions. D’Arcy Ferris’s motivation was broader than just historical interest, he saw reviving medieval sports and pastimes as a way to lighten the life of the poor that might even break down class prejudices.

Marshall notes that The play, the revels, and the procession were an enormous success and were repeated, under Ferris’s direction ten and twenty years later. The theme for the 1896 pageant was Boadicea to Victoria, followed by the tercentenary of the James I charter to the town in 1904, and a three-day pageant play and revels in 1906. The success of the Ripon Millenary Festival established D’Arcey Ferris as the nation’s leading Master of Revels and Pageant Master of the nineteenth century.