7


‘A BOOK, WHICH IF EVERYTHING ELSE IN OUR LANGUAGE SHOULD PERISH, WOULD ALONE SUFFICE TO SHOW THE WHOLE EXTENT OF ITS BEAUTY AND POWER’


24. BIBLE, ENGLISH, KING JAMES (‘GREAT SHE BIBLE’). The Holy Bible, Conteyning the Old Testament, and the New: Newly Translated out of the Originall Tongues: and with the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised by his Maiesties Speciall Comandement. London: Robert Barker, 1613-1611.


£24,950


Folio (390 x 260mm). Contemporary full English calf, boards panelled in blind with rolls with foliate corner-pieces, roll-tooled borders in blind, skilfully rebacked with compartments of original spine retained, compartments decorated in blind with central tools, modern calf-backed solander box by Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, and Zaehnsdorf, lettered in gilt on the spine; collation: A-B4


C6 D4 A-C6 A-5C6 A-2A6 (A1r wood-engraved general


title, A1v blank, A2r-A3r ‘The Epistle Dedicatorie’, A3v-B4v ‘The Translators to the Reader’, C1r-C6v calendar, printed in red and black, D1r ‘An Almanacke for xxxix Yeeres’ printed in red and black, D1v ‘To Finde Easter for Ever’ printed in red and black, D2r -D4r ‘The Table and Kalender’ printed in red and black, D4v ‘The Names and Order of All the Bookes of the Old and New Testament’, A1r-C6v ‘The Genealogies ... by J[ohn]. S[peed].’ part- title with wood-engraved royal arms, A1r-5C6v Old Testament, A1r wood-engraved New Testament title, A1v blank, A2r-2A6v New Testament); Old and New Testaments printed in double columns within ruled borders, 59 lines, text in black letter, commentary, marginalia, etc. in roman and italic characters, wood-engraved head- and tailpieces and initials, and 34 full-page wood-engraved genealogical tables numbered 1 to 34; some chipping and scoring on binding, some light damp-marking and spotting, some ll. cropped affecting borders or occasionally headlines, some unobtrusive marginal worming, circa 27 ll. torn with losses and repaired, bound without the map accompanying the genealogies as often, ll. A1-2, N3-4, 4P2-5, G1-5, R2-4, S1-6, and X1 in facsimile, and ll. D5, R5, and 2A5-6 with significant losses and duplicated in facsimile (conservation by Shepherds, Sangorski & Sutcliffe, and Zaehnsdorf, and with their label on the lower pastedown); provenance: ‘Richard Robarts His Booke Amen’ and ‘Richard Robartes his Booke so said Thomas [?]Cornewall’ (17th-century inscriptions on margins of C4v of calendar and title of genealogies respectively) — occasional early pen- trials or annotations in English and Latin.


The ‘Great She Bible’, the second edition of the King James Bible (or Authorized Version). Often described as ‘the only literary masterpiece ever to have been produced by a committee’, the translation now known as the King James Bible was initiated by King James I in 1604, and was undertaken by some fifty translators, working in six groups and based at Westminster, Cambridge and Oxford. ‘Being based on a wider range of classical and oriental scholarship than its predecessors, the Authorized Version was a more learned text. Fortunately, however, no attempt was made to produce a completely new translation. While consulting the original Hebrew and the “received” Greek text as printed by Robert Estienne in 1550, the translators took as the basic English text that of the Bishops’ Bible, as revised in 1572. They were instructed that it was to be “as little altered as the text of the original will permit”, but they were enjoined to consult the Tyndale [...] and Coverdale versions and the Geneva Bible [...]. It is also clear that they borrowed quite freely from the Catholic translation of the New Testament issued at Rheims in 1582. Above all the translators lived at a period when the genius of the language was in full flower. Though few of them were possessed individually of literary genius, “they had, so to speak, a collective ear and taste, and above all, they had intense and reverent zeal” [...] They succeeded superbly in their aim, not to create a new translation “but to make a good one better”, so that the noble prose of Tyndale and Coverdale remained the backbone of what Macaulay described 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).


Although some have argued that the ‘Great She Bible’ preceded the 1611 edition of the King James Bible (the ‘Great He Bible’), or that it constituted a second issue of the King James Bible (e.g. Fry, who names it ‘first edition, second issue, without reprints’), it is now generally agreed that the ‘Great She Bible’ should be considered the second edition of the King James Bible. Most of the sheets of the ‘Great She Bible’ were probably printed in 1611 but it was not completed and published until 1613, possibly due to some misadventure in the printing office, which caused the loss of a large number of sheets. Also (to further complicate the bibliography of the work) some 128 sheets are known in two different states, which are usually mixed quite indiscriminately, suggesting that two printers contributed to the stock of sheets which the publisher supplied to purchasers: distinguished by Smith as ‘B’ and ‘C’ issues (‘A’ being the 1611 ‘He’ bible), sheets from both settings are present in this volume. A handful of copies are also known with a title dated 1611, but the majority are dated 1613, as here. This copy includes the genealogies by John Speed, which have the royal arms on the title, but no privilege line below, and conforms with Fry’s no. 1. There are two notable textual changes in this edition, when compared to the 1611 edition: the first is in Ruth 3. 15, which has the more correct reading ‘she went into the citie’, which was retained in later printings and from which this edition derives the epithet the ‘Great She Bible’, and the second is the remarkable error in Matthew 26. 36: ‘Then commeth Judas with them unto a place called Gethsemane’ (in this copy, as often, this has been corrected in manuscript to the correct reading ‘commeth Jesus’).


DMH 319; ESTC S123049; F. Fry, A Description of ... the Editions, in Large Folio, of the Authorized Version; Pforzheimer 63; STC 2224; W.E. Smith, ‘A Study of the Great She Bible’, in The Library 2 (1890), pp. 1-11, 96-102, and 141ff.


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