“IF EVERYTHING ELSE IN OUR LANGUAGE SHOULD PERISH, IT WOULD ALONE SUFFICE”: 1773 KING JAMES BIBLE IN LOVELY CONTEMPORARY BINDING

BIBLE. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments… London: Charles Eyre and William Strahan, 1773. Thick quarto, contemporary full red calf, elaborately gilt-decorated spine and boards, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. $4800.

1773 edition of the magisterial King James Bible, “the most celebrated book in the English-speaking world” (Campbell, 1), handsomely bound in contemporary calf-gilt.

“Other translations may engage the mind, but the King James Version is the Bible of the heart” (Campbell, 275). First published in 1611, the King James Version has exercised incalculable influence on piety, language and literature. Macaulay praised it as “a book, which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power” (PMM 114). With Apocrypha. With separate New Testament title page dated 1772. Herbert 1228. Family record opposite New Testament title page.

Scattered light foxing. Contemporary calf gilt binding attractive with light expert restoration, expert repair to front joint, later endpapers.