The Psalter is a book containing the 150 psalms, i.e., lyrical prayers for every occasion recited both at church and at home.

•  Soft, white vellum kept safe in a cardboard and mylar folder; teeny nicks (as usual) on one edge of the leaf where it was sometime detached from previous sewing, preserving margin. Fine condition.  (30219)

Binding:  Contemporary Parisian calf, covers blind-embossed using two elaborate rolls and a number of rules to form elegant concentric rectangles; all edges gilt and gauffered.

Scarce: WorldCat locates justone copy in the U.S., and there is no copy of this edition in NUC Pre-1956 or COPAC.

Provenance:  John Linley Peel, Halifax (bookplate, front pastedown).

•  Renouard, Colines, 176. Not in Schreiber.   Bound as above, boards refurbished and sympathetically rebacked, with new headbands. Title-page and last few leaves dust-soiled; a bit of mild foxing and some small stains; the occasional tear or small hole, some resulting from printing mishaps and affecting two words of text on one leaf; some corners bumped or minutely turned in, and one torn away without approach to text. 16th-century ink inscription on title-page, scattered marginal marks and manicules in pencil and red ink. Sound, attractive, scarce, and COLINES.  (30113)

The Latin text here is printed in roman and italic with occasional Hebrew and sparse sidenotes, and decorated with woodcut ornaments and large initials in the prefatory matter and smaller woodcut initials throughout the text. The title-page features thelarge printer's device of Eustache Vignon (fl. 1571–89), son-in-law and successor of Jean Crespin who first published the book at the same shop in Geneva in 1559.

•  Adams C-306; IA 130.185.   19th-century half calf over handsome marbled paper boards, gilt title to red morocco lettering piece, blue speckled edges; front joint starting, back joint cracked, extremities rubbed with some loss to leather at corners and top of spine. Ex-library: bookplate on front pastedown, old-fashioned sticker with shelfmark at base of spine, old pencilling. Waterstained with pinhole worming in text, especially title-page, first 40 and last ten leaves, with minor foxing worsening at end; two small corners torn away and one hole from a natural paper flaw; last leaf mounted. Sparse underlining and two marginal annotations in early ink, and canceled ownership inscription on title-page. Despite its imperfections, desirable for being one of Calvin's rarer works.  (30396)

As Darlow and Moule comment, “by printing the Rheims Testament in full, side by side with the Bishops' version, [Fulke] secured for the former a publicity which it would not otherwise have obtained, and was indirectly responsible for the marked influence which Rheims exerted on the Bible of 1611.” Alan Thomas elaborates by observing that “many a dignified or felicitous phrase was silently lifted by the editors of King James's Version, and thus passed into the language” (Great Books and Book Collectors, p. 108).

Provenance:  Signature of a contemporary owner “A. Thorpe, York,” undated, on A2.

•  STC 2900; Darlow & Moule 265; Herbert 265; ESTC S115769.   Modern black calf, covers framed with single gilt rule and paneled in gilt rolls with corner fleurons. Title-page mounted, with outer edge and small hole in lower margin reinforced; dust-soiled. A2 with early inked ownership signature (see above) and notation; reinforced at hinge (inside). Other markings: two pages with marginal notations and four pages with corrections, both inked by an early hand. Bug-spotting on several preliminary leaves. Light waterstaining on some early and later leaves, with occasional odd stains and spots elsewhere, not impairing sense of text. Dust-soiling on index pages. Two preliminary leaves missing small pieces of paper in blank margins; small hole at top outer corner of Kkkk4; and small chip at top edge of Hhhh2. Fold-mark at top outer corner of Vvv2. In fact, a very nice copy of an important book.  (24477)

The O.T. is in five parts here, the first and last having their own registers and pagination; each testament's title-page bears a large, nicely executed version of the printer's device (stolen from the Estienne family). The text is dotted with woodcut initials and accented with head- and tailpieces; the main body of the text is printed in double-column format surrounded by notes.

•  Darlow & Moule 6192 (note).   19th-century acid-stained calf, raised bands, each volume with one red and one dark blue spine label, Apocrypha bound in after N.T. at end of vol. II; some scuffing or light abrasions. Extensive 19th-century commentary in ink on pastedowns and some fly-leaves; one manuscript note (and a pasted-in old bookseller’s description) on cut down and mounted title-page of vol. I; a very few other notes (“not in Syriac”). Ex-library with bookplates but no stamps; first volume's first foliation with slender worming into text from lower margin on ff. 16–29; age-toning, foxing, and some medium-sized brown stainings generally. A solid and acceptable copy of a less than common edition of this important translation that was Milton's favorite Latin version of the Bible.  (30347)

Provenance:  Ownership signature of Albemarle Bertie, 9th Earl of Lindsey, the British general and member, briefly, of Parliament for Stamford, 1744–1818 (front fly-leaf verso); and his armorial bookplate (front pastedown). Another bookplate, small and circular (front pastedown, top), has the initials “M.A.H.” beneath a crown, likely for the M.A. Huntley who signed the front fly-leaf in ink. Presentation inscription signed Rev. [???] Edmunds “to his much valued & esteemed friend M.A. Pegus,” March 14, 1840.

The coat of arms forBertie County, North Carolina, incorporates the same shield, helm, and crest, as the arms of our Albemarle Bertie, whose relatives James and Henry Bertie acquired that land from the original Lord Proprietors before 1729.

This Bible isscarce: Just two copies were found in U.S. libraries via WorldCat and NUC Pre-1956.

•  Wing B2237; Herbert 631; ESTC R229989 (bound with Sternhold & Hopkins' Book of Psalms); L. Wilson, Bibles . . . in English, I, 183. Not in Darlow & Moule. On Bertie County, see: “James & Henry Bertie, Namesakes of the County,” in The Bertie Historical Association, vol. II, no. 2 (Oct. 1954).   Binding as above; leather darkened more or less evenly all over to a rich russet, lightly worn along the front joint with an old inch-long repair at the top, board corners lightly bumped, front supra-libros rubbed from use, at the spot, imaginably, where Bertie put his thumb. One small tear to a later leaf, the very lower outer corners of a few leaves torn away to no adverse effect, and a minute chip to the edge of the title-page; text remarkably clean with instances of off-setting from the hand-coloring the only “stains.”  (30139)

This edition includes the Scholia, with a separate title-page (“In Sacra Biblia Graeca ex versione LXX. interpretum Scholia; simul et interpretum cæterorum lectiones variantes”); the Old Testament is printed in double-column format, and the title-page in red and black.

•  Darlow & Moule 4692; ESTC R210989; Wing B2718; Bowes, Catalogue of Cambridge Books, 266; Rumball-Petre 254.   Contemporary speckled calf, covers framed in triple blind fillets, spine with gilt-stamped leather title-label (chipped) and blind-tooled ray decorations in head and foot compartments; sides with small scuffs and patches of mild to moderate discoloration, leather chipped at head of spine and nicked at lower front edge, spine leather showing thin cracks. Pastedowns and front free endpaper lacking, back free endpaper and fly-leaves partially excised. Pages trimmed very closely, in a few cases touching headers or first or last letters. Title-page with early inked ownership inscription, lined through. Occasional small ink spots, touching but virtually never obscuring letters; one leaf with three words corrected in an early inked hand; scattered instances of early underlining in colored pencil. Mild age-toning. A landmark of Bible printing in England.  (30034)

•  ESTC T117664. Contemporary speckled calf, covers separated; front cover sometime (home?)-stitched to spine and holding, back one once (later) held on by paper laid over spine and a portion of both covers, paper now considerably chipped away. Lacking endpapers; front pastedown with library bookplate, back pastedown with doodles. Pages age-toned, with some minor foxing.

An important example of 18th-century fine printing of the Bible

The quarto edition was limited to 500 copies.

Binding:  Contemporary red morocco: Covers bordered with triple-fillet rule and round spine with five raised bands, resulting six spine compartments each with a triple-fillet gilt frame; five compartments each with gilt center device and the sixth with title in gilt. Board edges with gilt double-rule, gilt dentelles on turn-ins, marbled endpapers. All edges gilt.

•  Gaskell (enlarged ed.) Add. 1; Darlow & Moule 4755.   Binding as above; front cover with 1.5" scar to front over (from a burn?), otherwise light rubbing only. A clean copy inside with a few pairs of facing leaves showing a narrow and rather odd band of soiling across their top margins; otherwise, only the quite occasional spot or old smudge. A handsome copy.  (29610)

The poetic Song of Solomon is here interpreted and typeset as a drama, with, as full-fledged characters, the Bridegroom, the Spouse, and choruses of Virgins and Companions; Percy's introduction and notes explain that choice and, otherwise, deal largely with the background of Jewish marriage ceremonies.

The title-page is printed in red and black, with the author supplied in old ink. Dodsley has supplied a light scattering of ornaments, including a rather charming mini-manicule that introduces the most significant notes.

•  See: Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, II, 242; not in: Darlow & Moule. On Percy, who later became one of the king's chaplains-in-ordinary, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   19th-century half calf over gray marbled boards, spine gilt-ruled with red label, speckled edges; joints and board edges rubbed and faded, leather cracking along spine. Lacking the first leaf (half-title?). Offsetting from binding to endpapers, mild foxing throughout, a copy sound and pleasant.  (30122)

Each volume closes with extensive Notes; the last leaf of vol. I offers a list of other works by this author for sale from the same publisher; and the last page of the second volume has an affixed errata slip. The notes are quite direct and personal, with Wakefield remarking, e.g., on what effect or variety of accuracy he is trying to achieve; what the knot of difficulty at a particular point actually is, for the translator; and whose “excellent” reading he is following (and how the chosen version from the Coptic differs from the Syriac or AEthiopic). He expresses surprise that an “obvious construction” has “escaped the critics” so “remarkabl[y]” long as it has, and in another case confesses that he is “quite at a loss” as to how one clause is supposed to connect with another — definitely, he's a scholar who yetlives in his pages.

Provenance:  Armorial bookplates of Justinian Minoch laid in.

•  ESTC T93093; Darlow & Moule 933 (see note); Herbert 1362. On Wakefield, see: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography online.   Recent quarter black morocco and stone pattern marbled paper–covered sides, leather edges tooled in blind; spines with gilt-stamped title, volume number, place/date, and compartment decorations. Bookplates laid in as above. Half-titles and title-pages with handsome old institutional pressure-stamp; each first text page with inked numeral. Intermittent light foxing, pages otherwise clean. An engaging pair of books in all respects.  (25784)

George Campbell (1719–96) was a minister of the Church of Scotland, theologian, and principal of Marischal College. He wrote a number of theological works, including a defense of miracles in response to David Hume, and was noted for originality of argument as well as charity towards his opponents. This translation of the Gospels was first published in England in 1789; the work consists of a preface and preliminary dissertations, the actual translation, and the notes, with the whole being very scholarly, resorting frequently to the Greek in the dissertations and notes.

Provenance: Title-page and contents leaf with early inked inscriptions reading “Jas. Booth.”

•  ESTC W4383; Evans 30086; Hills, English Bible in America, 56. On Campbell, see: The Dictionary of National Biography. Contemporary treed sheep, rubbed and abraded with leather lost at corners/spine and cracking over joints and spine. Title-page and contents inscribed as described above; endpapers waterstained, and pages with light spots of foxing. Paper in many sections faintly blue.

•  ESTC W4382; Evans 35200; Hills, English Bible in America, 71. On Campbell, see: The Dictionary of National Biography.   Publisher's brown leather, rebacked, board edges refurbished, original spine-label reused. Old library pressure-stamps and a bit of pencilling, stamped numberwith a (properly deaccessioned). Occasional light foxing and with some marginal waterstains. Overall, a rather nice copy.  (23757)

•  Shaw & Shoemaker 19538.   Good. Removed from a nonce volume. Lightly browned with worming to title-page, touching, but not obscuring, letters. (1170)

16 woodcuts

Provenance:  Front free endpaper with early inked ownership inscription, Nancy Stone[r] or Stone[ 's].

•  Adomeit, Three Centuries of Thumb Bibles, A45; Shoemaker 1613; Welch, American Children’s Books, 860.5.   Contemporary sheep, spine with gilt-stamped title and foliate decorations; moderately rubbed overall. Front free endpaper with inscription as above. Front fly-leaves torn and creased, first few leaves each with small hole (touching frontispiece image and a few letters, not obscuring sense). One leaf with outer edge chipped, touching several letters. Foxing and spots of staining; some corners bumped. A sound little volume of the type.  (29324)

A major element in any Mormon collection and a requisite for any major collection of American Bibles.

•  Hills 618; O’Callaghan 189. Contemporary plain calf, spine with raised bands, gilt-ruled above and below and with gilt-lettered title in second compartment; gilt a little rubbed. Hinges (inside) repaired with paper. Shallow chipping and tattering, and many dog ears; tears mostly in the margins of pages and plates, but a few closed tears into text, on pp. 283–84 with loss of individual letters but not of sense; tattering on last leaf just touching text, leaf repaired with cellophane on verso; tissue repairs on pp. 273–74 and on the reverse of the frontispiece. Moderately foxed throughout; lacking pp. 765–68 of supplementary material (only). Pp. 618–19 are here misprinted in place of pp. 622–23—all text being present, if out of order! This significant Bible is here in a trim, neat contemporary binding. (10785)

Click the images for enlargements.

Binding:  Contemporary embossed rich cordovan-colored morocco cathedral binding featuring inter alii the Holy Ghost (in Pentacostal dove–form), the Agnus Dei, and stained/leaded glass “windows” both pointed and rosette. Spine additionally with gilt-stamped title; turn-ins with blind-roll design. All edges brightly gilt.

•  Not in Herbert.   Binding as above, in beautiful condition. First front fly-leaf with early inked familial gift inscription (including an explanation of one brother's having opted out of the group present!); second front fly-leaf with inked dedicatory poem.  (22266)

Binding: Contemporary red straight-grain morocco, covers framed in gilt roll, spine with gilt-stamped title and compartment decorations.

Provenance: Ownership initials of William R. Whittingham (G.R.W., the "William" being rendered as "Guillelmus" for his love of Latin), fourth Episcopal Bishop of Baltimore; stamp of an Episcopal Diocesan lending library.

•  Front joint almost entirely broken, back joint starting from top, head of spine chipped, with binding showing minor darkening and scuffing overall. Free endpapers excised. Front pastedown with rubber-stamp as above (no other institutional markings); first text page with inked ownership inscription as above dated [18]64. Title-page of first work lacking. Pages slightly age-toned, some creased; one leaf with lower outer corner torn away. Small emphasis marks to index of Hymns, with an additional manuscript entry in the table of first lines.

Binding:  Contemporary black morocco, covers framed in blind with embossed arabesque corner decorations; spine with embossed geometrical designs and gilt-stamped title, board edges and turn-ins gilt stamped. All edges gilt.

Provenance:  Front pastedown with bookplate of author and prominent Bible and bindings collector Frederick E. Maser. Front fly-leaves with private owner's small rubber-stamp (Richard - WP - Morris) and inked ownership inscription (John Lempriere Delagarde) dated 1852; front free endpaper with later inscription (Gordon D. Savage).

•  Darlow & Moule 1164; Herbert 387–88; Rumball-Petre, Rare Bibles, 53.   Binding as above, now strong, with front cover reattached and moderate rubbing only. Bookplate and ownership notes as above. A few pages with faint spotting, most pages clean. A lovely and notably usable copy of a perennially interesting English Bible.  (27130)

WorldCat fails to locate any U.S. institutional holdings but we know that the American Bible Society recently acquired a copy.

•  Darlow & Moule 1823; North & Nida, Book of a Thousand Tongues (1972), 60.   Recent maroon fabrikoid with black fabrikoid spine label. Original free endpapers retained, soiled, chipped at edge, and with some writing in Armenian. Text generally age-toned but paper good; all edges saffron.  (29737)

Binding:  Publisher's boards of papier maché and plaster, formed using a metal mold and colored black, creating a gothic “carved wood binding.” Title blind-embossed on black roan spine. All edges gilt.

McLean states of the English edition of this work that “It was . . . the first of the so-called 'papier maché' bindings, contrived to look like carved ebony.” This first American edition bears the first “papier maché” binding accomplished in the U.S.

•  Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England, 231; McLean, Victorian Book Design (second edition), pp. 99, 210; Maggs Bros., Bookbinding in the British Isles, part 2, 245; Abbey, Life, 222.   Very nicely preserved copy with just a few small cracks in the binding, leaves expertly reattached/recased; spine intact with surface of front cover a little rubbed in one small portion. Unlike the broken, chipped, and damaged copies we have seen, this is a treasurable exemplar. Housed in a quarter red cloth clamshell case with tan cloth sides and black leather gilt spine label.  (30100)

Binding: Pebbled black leather sumptuously gilt: The covers tooled with a design composed of a base and pavilion formed of foliated C and S curve volutes enclosing fine foliated strapwork. Ornate columns support the pavilion, which encloses a shell. From the base hang a pair of acroteria, and the base supports a vase of flowers on a rocaille. Board edges gilt-rolled; gilt inner dentelles. Spine divided into compartments by narrow raised bands: Each compartment with a frame of treble fillets, within the second compartment the title gilt-lettered, the remaining compartments ornamented within by fine foliated filigree. All edges gilt.

Provenance: Presentation copy to Harriet E. Henderson with her name in gilt centered on the front cover.

•  Not in Hills; not in Herbert; not in O'Callaghan. Binding as above with a few barely noticeable small abrasions. A few spots of light staining on some pages. As nice an example of this kind of Bible "production" as you are ever going to find.

Prior to this, various books of the New Testament had been printed at the Park Hill Mission Press but a complete Testament was never attempted there

Provenance:  Bookplate of Dr. Andrew Pickens, late a professor of theology at Furman University.

Evidence of readership: Occasional marginalia and interlinear notes in the neat small hand of Dr. Pickens, mostly suggestions for translations or meanings of words; a leaf of notes and a syllabic “key” are laid in.

•  Darlow & Moule 2448; North & Nida, Book of a Thousand Tongues (1972), 215; Pilling, Proof-sheets, 3743.   Publisher's black pebble-textured cloth. Very good condition.  (27811)

Provenance:  Front covers each with gilt-stamped leather label reading “Henry G. Weston.”

•  NSTC 2B26290.   Contemporary half brown morocco with marbled paper–covered sides, front covers with leather labels as above; somewhat rubbed/scuffed with joints and hinges reinforced, back joint of vol. I just starting, spine leather with small cracks and chips. Front pastedowns with traces of now-absent bookplates; first pages each with rubber-stamped numeral, inked notation along inner margin, and institutional pressure-stamp; back pastedowns with pockets. Text annotated as above, marginalia in different colors of ink depending on category (vol. II and latter portion of vol. I not interleaved, with fewer marginalia). Paper slightly embrittled, with occasional short edge tears; one leaf with short slice from outer margin, extending into text without loss. A few instances of staining; scattered faint foxing. Sound, attractive, and interesting in a variety of ways.  (26038)

Smith endeavored to provide an extremely literal, word-for-word rendition to enhance her and her sisters' understanding of the text. Regarding the rather tangled results, she notes in her preface that “readers of this book may think it strange that I have made such use of the tenses . . . It seems to me that the original Hebrew had no regard to time, and that the Bible speaks for all ages.”

•  Herbert 2002; Hills 1918; Rumball-Petre 201; Wright, Early Bibles of America, 234–35. On Smith, see: McHenry, Famous American Women, 383 (under entry for Smith, Abby Hadassah).   Publisher's pebbled brown cloth, title and translator's name simply gilt-stamped within blind-stamped panel; recently rebacked and original spine reapplied (spine slightly rumpled), one corner restored, other corners mildly rubbed. Hinges (inside) reinforced. Front pastedown with affixed newspaper clipping on the Smith sisters. One page with short tear from lower edge, not extending into text; pages clean. A nice copy of a very desirable Bible.  (27574)

•  Binding as above, with light rubbing overall and significant rubbing to spine and corners; spine pulled at top and bottom and joints (outside) rubbed, with rear lower joint starting and with remnant of old inked shelf location to one band. Occasional faint smudges; pages mostly remarkably clean.A handsome and studyable thing.  (27372)