A little book with a big story

"This item was recently gifted to the RCB Library (the Church of Ireland archive repository), by C. C. Lundy, the son of the Revd St George Lundy (1914–1976), and is an intricate miniature version of the Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments, published in 1896 by David Bryce & Sons, a publishing house that specialised in miniaturisation. Measuring only 4.3 cm in height, and 3 cm in width, it is bound in a dark blue cover, and comes complete with a magnifying glass to assist the reader decipher the text. A particularly delightful aspect of the volume is that it includes drawings of notable biblical events. It’s bigger story comes four decades after its publication and revealed by the front endpaper inscribed thus: ‘From the Library of John Knott, M.D. given to St George Lundy by Eleanor Knott with best wishes 23 IV 1938’. St George Charles Hubert Lundy trained in Trinity College and was ordained in 1938. The 23 April was his 24th birthday, and it is this date that marks the gift from the remarkable Eleanor Knott (1886-1975) whom he may have met during his divinity training at Trinity. Eleanor had been encouraged by her Cornish mother, Philippa Annie Knott (née Balcombe) to study Irish, and came to focus on Old Irish at the School of Irish Learning in 1907. After initial work for the Royal Irish Academy, she lectured in Celtic Languages at Trinity from 1928, and would succeed to a new Chair of Early Irish, created for her in 1939. The miniature Bible originated in her father’s Library, that of John Freeman Knott, a medical doctor. Her gift to the young soon to be ordained cleric St George Lundy towards the end of his ordination training reflects a deeply personal act of generosity and perhaps admiration. Lundy was heavily involved in the workings of the Theological Society in Trinity and went on to have a distinguished clerical career in the diocese of Connor, where he served in a number of parishes, ending as rector of Glenavy, county Antrim, from 1962 until his premature death in 1976, just a year after Eleanor who died in her 90th year. "