Folio (370 x 247 mm). Double-column text in Gothic and Roman types, calendar printed in red and black. (Lacking title-page, map, and last leaf [supplied in facsimile], also lacking A2, A5, A6, C6, and D1; 31 leaves at beginning and end frayed or torn with loss to text remargined and silked, a few other leaves with losses to margins, a few lower margins shaved occasionally affecting signature or catchword.)  Full modern blind-panelled calf.  

 

FIRST EDITION of the King James Bible, the Authorized version, with the reading “he” in Ruth 3:15 (Bb2r). The translation, royally commissioned to reconcile the differences between the Bishop’s bible and the Geneva Bible, is, according to W. A. Jackson, “perhaps the single most important influence upon the development of English prose style.”  "From about the middle of the seventeenth century on to the appearance of the Revised Bible of 1881-5, King James' version reigned without rival" (Herbert). Darlow & Moule 309; ESTC S122347; Pforzheimer 61; PMM 114; STC 2216.