The Book of Common Prayer (BCP) is the foundational liturgical book of the Anglican tradition — the source of the “common,” or shared, prayer that gives Anglican worship its name. The first edition was compiled by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549, under Edward VI, replacing the Latin liturgy inherited from the pre-Reformation Church with a single, unified service book in English, so that ordinary worshippers could follow and take part in the words of the liturgy for the first time.
The Prayer Book was revised by Cranmer again in 1552, briefly set aside during the Catholic restoration under Mary I, and then restored with revisions in 1559 as part of the Elizabethan Settlement. A further significant revision followed the Restoration in 1662, producing the edition that remains the official Prayer Book of the Church of England to this day.
The Book of Common Prayer contains set forms for the whole pattern of Anglican worship: Morning and Evening Prayer (the Daily Office), the order for Holy Communion, and the “occasional offices” — baptism, confirmation, marriage, and burial — as well as the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, printed at the back.
As Anglicanism spread worldwide, most provinces of the Communion developed their own prayer books, adapted to local language and context — so “the Book of Common Prayer” today can mean several different, related books, all tracing their structure back to Cranmer's original 1549 work.