(Bible in English. The Great Bible) | The most complete copy to appear at auction in more than a century

(Bible in English. The Great Bible)

[The Byble in Englishe, that is, the Olde and New Testament, after the Translacion Appoynted to bee Read in the Churches. Imprynted at London [and Antwerp or Cologne?]: in Fletestrete, at the Signe of the Sunne, ouer agaynste the conduyte, by Edwarde Whitchurche, The. xxix. day of December, the yeare of our Lorde. M. D. XLIX (1549)] 

5 parts in one volume, folio (302 x 188 mm). Black-letter types, text in two columns, 57 lines plus headline, titles to second and third parts and the New Testament within historiated woodcut borders, Apocrypha title ("fourth parte") "printed in bold and curious type" (Herbert), 2 woodcut illustrations (Abraham and Isaac [fo. 9v], Jacob's Ladder [fo. 13v], a variety of woodcut initials, some historiated; general title-page in pen-and-ink facsimile, the following 7 leaves and the 16 final leaves inlaid, some with loss and facsimile restoration, a number of other leaves extended, half of fo. xli in the New Testament supplied from another copy, the New Testament cut close at fore-edge with many shoulder-notes cropped, some headlines and scattered other shoulder-notes shaved, some soiling, but withal a very good, unusually complete copy, evidently the most complete copy to appear at auction in more than a century. Nineteenth-century black pebbled morocco gilt by C. Murton, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. Housed in a nineteenth-century maroon morocco casket, blind-panelled on lid and lettered “Cranmer's Bible.”

Coverdale's revision of the "Matthew" Bible, frequently referred to as "Cranmer's Bible," although the Archbishop had very little to do with it other than writing the preface. This edition is a version of the "Great Bible," which was first published in 1539. The preliminary leaves, parts III and V, and the leaves from folio lxxxix to the end of part II were almost certainly printed by Whitchurch, with the rest probably being printed in Antwerp or Cologne. There are distinctive differences in the typography of the separate printings.

The general title (present here in facsimile) is contained within a border similar to that used for Whitchurch's 1549 edition of the Paraphrase of Erasmus. The border of the part II section-title consists of eleven woodblocks: two above and two below are like those used in the earlier Great Bibles, a smaller cut appears immediately beneath the letterpress, and the remaining six small cuts representing New Testament incidents are arranged three on each side. The parts III and V title borders are arranged similarly, except that in the former a larger cut appears immediately beneath the letterpress, and in the latter this block is omitted.

The Great Bible "included both the canonical and apocryphal books. … The New Testament works were printed in the order set out by Erasmus in his 1516 Greek New Testament, with the four works regarded by Luther as being of doubtful authority—Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation—fully integrated into the text. The pattern set by the Great Bible became normative for English Bibles, and is reflected in the presentation and ordering of the text in both the Geneva Bible and the King James Bible. … The translation of the text offered by the Great Bible is best seen as a judicious blend of Tyndale and Coverdale, with the offending notes of Matthew's Bible removed" (Alister E. McGrath, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible, pp. 94–95).

REFERENCES

ESTC S107004; STC (2nd ed.) 2079; Darlow & Moule (Herbert) 76; Luborsky & Ingram, English Illustrated Books 2079

PROVENANCE

B. R. Donaldson, director of advertising and sales promotion, and later, vice chairman, for the Ford Motor Company (accompany correspondence discussing his acquisition of the book from London bookseller Edward George Friehold, 1928–1931)