(Bible in English) | "Thou shalte covette thy neighboures house..."

(Bible in English)

[The fyrste parte of the Bible called the .v. bookes of Moses translated by W. T. wyth all his prologes before every boke...]. [London: J. Day, 1551]

8vo (140 x 94 mm). collation: R-Y⁸ Aa-Ss⁸ (lacking A-Q⁸, Tt-Vv⁸, and final blank): 192 leaves (of 336). Woodcut initials, Gothic type; two titles laid down in facsimile, leaves browned, foxed, and stained, some margins chipped, old creases, contemporary marginalia, a few short tears and holes, primarily closed and to margins, Y1 and Hh8 with repair. Full nineteenth-century calf over beveled boards, paneled in blind, spine with raised bands in five compartments, the second and fourth with red morocco labels gilt-lettered, nine blank leaves inserted at either end; extremities and corners rubbed and bumped, endleaves with manuscript notes and slips pasted in.

Substantial fragment of the rare octavo format of Becke's revision of Taverner's version, containing Exodus 28:3–Deuteronomy 28:1—with a startling misprint in the Ten Commandments: "thou shalte covette thy neighboures house, field, ceruaunt, maide..."

This was the first part of several octavo instalments of the Old Testament printed by Day, forming one edition published in parts. Day also printed a single-volume folio edition, comprising all of the parts, in the same year (STC 2088). Day outlined his motivations for the division in parts, writing in the work's preface, "Consideringe also, that the bookes contaynynge the same: beynge together in anye one volume, eyther are of so highe price that the pore ... are not able to bye them ... I (furthered by the honest request of diuers) haue to the comoditie of these pore, printed ye whol old testament in .iiii. sundry partes, ty they whiche ar not able to bie ye hole, may bie a part..."

However, according to STC, the present volume was printed last in the series. Darlow & Moule note this oddity: "But why should the first part, which alone contains the preface explaining the object of this edition issued in separate volumes, appear latest of them all?" They posit that perhaps the present volume was the first of a reissue that was never completed, or in any case, in which the other volumes did not survive.

RBH records no copies at auction. USTC locates just four copies held by institutions: the Cambridge University Library, the British Library, John Rylands University Library in Manchester, and the University of Oregon Library.

REFERENCES

Darlow & Moule 94; ESTC S126044; STC (2nd ed.) 2087; USTC 517869

PROVENANCE

Paul W. Schmidtchen (twentieth-century armorial bookplate to upper pastedown) — J. Rowland Raqdale (inscription to front endpaper dated 1896)