PRESENTING FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

EXQUISITE

GENUINE 

178 YEAR OLD

** FIRST EDITION, SECOND ISSUE **

1846

 ILLUMINATED BIBLE 

PRINTED BY HARPER AND BROTHERS

IN NEW YORK

HERBERT # 1860

HILL # 1161

A LARGE FOLIO

13 " x 10 1/2” x 4”

AND WEIGHING NEARLY 15 POUNDS

WITH

1600 ENGRAVINGS

BY

J.A. ADAMS

AND

J.B. CHAPMAN

AND

WITH WONDERFUL ORNATE DROP CAPITAL INITIALS

THE ILLUMINATED BIBLE (probably more accurately described as the illustrated Bible) was perhaps the most important American Bible printed in the 19th century.

This work was originally announced in 1843 and was offered by subscription in 54 periodic sections of 28 pages each for 25 cents each to fund the project. Subscriptions were commonly used to finance expensive editions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Other notable works that were sold by subscription were the 1763 John Baskerville Bible, the 1793 Benjamin Kennicott Bible and the enormous 1800 Thomas Macklin Bible. These periodic sections were issued from 1843 forward. Once a subscriber received them all, these sections would have been taken to a bookbinder for completion. Then, in 1846, with the funding, art work and typesetting complete, it was issued for the second time in its entirety with the general title page bearing the date 1846. An Illuminated Bible proudly remains atop Mary Anna Randolph Custis Lee's parlor table inside her ancestral Virginia estate, Arlington House, now part of Arlington National Cemetery.

"J.A. Adams, the engraver, is credited with having taken the first electrotype in America from a woodcut. Many in this Bible are so done. Artists were engaged for more than six years in the preparation of the designs and engravings included in this Bible, at a cost of over $20,000." O'Callaghan, p.288.

" The engravings after Chapman carefully reproduced the prim line-work of drawings. There was very little of the tone-work made possible by the white line method of the Englishman Bewick, introduced here by Alexander Anderson....However, this Harper publication was a remarkable production for its time and place, and retains its importance in the annals of American book-making. W.J. Linton, noted wood-engraver and author , knew no other book like this, so good, so perfect in all it undertakes. The illustrations are like picturings of history, as are so many of the old European Biblical paintings and illustrations." Frank Weitenkampf, The Boston Public Library Quarterly, (July 1958, pp.154-157)

NEWLY AND BEAUTIFULLY REBOUND IN LUXURIOUS EXTRA BLIND STAMPED BLACK SHEEPSKIN WITH WONDERFUL MARBLED ENDPAPERS

COLLATION

 OLD TESTAMENT [844], APOCRYPHA [128], NEW TESTAMENT [256], TABLES [4], CHRONOLOGICAL INDEX [8], INDEX TO THE SUBJECTS [14], CONCORDANCE [34]. COMPLETE.

CONDITION

The pages are crisp with minimal soiling and with scattered foxing as usually found in editions on wood pulp paper from this era. A better example than most. GOOD+

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