The Bible and Holy Scriptvres

hand-coloured woodcut illustrations & maps

The second quarto edition of the Geneva Bible.

A remarkable example, ruled in red throughout, and illustrated with twenty-six woodcut designs and five maps, all but one in striking early hand-colour, possibly contemporary. The whole well-preserved in this very unusual onlaid vellum binding dating to the middle of the seventeenth century.

The Geneva version was first published in 1560. The translation was primarily the work of English 'Marian exiles', who, having fled England following the accession of Mary I in 1553, sought to create a version of the scriptures that emphasised clarity and promoted accessibility for the learned lay. It is sometimes known as the 'Breeches Bible' for the rendering of 'Aprons as 'breeches' in Gen. 3:7.

'The New Testament is a careful revision of William Whittingham's (d.1579) Testament of 1557, due to a further comparison with Beza's Latin translation. The Old Testament and Apocrypha are based mainly on the Great Bible, corrected from the original Hebrew and Greek, and compared with the Latin versions of Leo Juda and others. The influence of the revisers of Olivetan's French Bible is strikingly shown by the fact that the "Arguments" to the Books of Job and Psalms in this English edition are translated almost word for word from those found in the French octavo Bible printed at Geneva in 1559' (Darlow & Moule).

The text was reprinted first in revised folio format in 1562, and then in this second quarto edition of indeterminate date. Our example is a variant with the general title-page and title to the 'Calendar Historical' dated 1569, with other examples dated 1568 and 1570 on the title.

The woodcut illustrations follow the pattern established by earlier Bibles printed in Geneva, reusing the blocks made for editions of a French-language Bible printed in 1559 and 1561, and for the first English Geneva Bible of 1560. (Luborsky & Ingram).

The binding, of gilt-tooled vellum onlaid in red goatskin, is highly distinctive. The vellum covers have been tooled with an all-over design incorporating a 'swirling floral' device that has been replicated in the goatskin onlays and also in the gauffered edges of the text block. In the middle of the onlaid lozenge centrepieces are the mirrored initials 'S I T V' on two lines (possibly 'T V I S'). The whole has been restored at some point in the late nineteenth century: the headbands have been re-sewn, new endpapers introduced, and portions of the vellum at the spine and corners and the goatskin onlays renewed.

This unusual binding shares similarities with two English Bibles from the second half of the seventeenth-century, both of gilt-tooled vellum with decorative goatskin onlays. The earlier, illustrated as no. 43 in Howard Nixon's English Restoration Bookbindings, is a London printed Bible dated 1651 signed 'Lewis: fecit' and ascribed to the workshop of Stephen and Thomas Lewis on Shoe Lane in the City of London. The other, a duodecimo King James Bible dated 1680, is illustrated as no. 62 in Maggs Bros' Bookbinding in the British Isles, Catalogue 1212, Part I (Summer 1996).

David Pearson, in English Bookbinding Styles 1450-1800 pp65-66, notes: 'The aesthetic potential of decorated vellum... only really came into its own for a relatively brief time in English bookbinding history, for a few decades at the end of the sixteenth century and the beginning of the seventeenth.... This type of binding fell out of popularity during the 1640s and vellum played no more than a minor roll in decorated English bookbinding thereafter'.

With provenance for the 'Person' family, with their genealogy in pen to the blank leaf preceding the New Testament title:

'September [the]: 22th: 1651
Thomas Person was borne
January [the] 20th: 1671
hee departed this life: and buried
the 24th of [the] same
Fevruary [the]: 5h: 1662
Mary Person departed this life
February [the]: 6th: 1656
Jane Person was borne; and shee
departed this life April [the] 2th-
April [the]: 3th: 1663
James Person departed this life:
Jane and James a
was buried booth together
April [the] 10th: 1663
My mother was buried'.

This copy also sometime offered for sale by James Tregaskis of the 'Caxton Head' at 232 Holborn Road, London, with a remnant of his printed description loose to the front endpapers. Latterly in the collection of the General Theological Seminary Library, New York prior to its recent de-acquisition.

Second quarto edition; 4to (23 x 15 cm); general title and 'Calender Historical' dated 1569, New Testament title and Pslames dated 1568, 26 woodcut illustrations (of 27, lacking the double-page plan of the restored temple), 5 maps (3 double-paged), all but one ('The diuision of the land of Canaan') in early hand-colour, possibly contemporary, with offsetting to facing-pages, with hand-colour also to title-pages, ruled in red throughout (later pen rules to general title), manuscript family register to blank f. preceding NT title, general title, Calender title, and final 3ff with paper repairs and mounted on stub at gutter margin, further early paper repairs throughout, both double-page maps (following M3 and 2A1) mounted via stubs at verso, later endpapers, perforated library stamp to general title, associated bookplate to front pastedown and blindstamp to final f., loose old catalogue descriptions, including for James Tregaskis of 232, High Holborn at the 'Caxton Head'; seventeenth-century vellum gilt, with an all-over design of floral swirls within gilt-roll border, the covers and spine further onlaid in red goatskin with triangular corner and lozenge centrepieces similarly gilt-tooled, and with the initials 'S I T V' on 2-lines in gilt to the centre, the edges gauffered repeating this swirling tool, the vellum gilt-work faded, and the whole repaired extensively in the 19th-century, with new vellum reinforcing the spine and corners, areas of the morocco onlay likewise renewed and new lettering-pieces added to the spine; foliation: [12], 388, 387-410, 94, [6], 129, [19], 82ff.

ESTC S122261; Herbert 130; DM 94; Luborsky & Ingram B:2106.