MINIATURE BIBLE] New Testament (The) of our Lord Jesus Christ, Faithfully translated out of Greeke. Imprinted at London : by the Deputies of Christopher Barker, printer to the Queens most excellent Maiestie, Anno 1591. 32 in 8 s., 76mm. by 49mm. Early calf, tooled in blind. Silver corner bosses and centre clasp with initials RT to back of clasp. Provenance: Woman's ownership with contemporary signature of Mary Nash to title page. 18th century ex-libris, likely Thurston of Hoxne Abbey, Suffolk with crest of a stork and motto: Esse quam videri. Internally, some toning, but generally a remarkable specimen, some passages with simple underscoring in a contemporary hand. This is the first printing of the New Testament in miniature format in England. A remarkable feat with the type and spacing each only 1 mm to accommodate the text in such a small format. The book was reprinted the following year and again in 1593. ESTC records only 3 copies; British Library, University Iowa and State Library of South Australia. The only copy in commerce sold, at Sotheby s in 1986 for the princely sum of 9900 GBP. The question of why this miniature bible was printed provides some fascinating avenues for scholarly research. Miniature bibles could have been conceived for private devotion or perhaps for travel or women, as the provenance on this copy suggests. However, this particular printing may also have been spurred on by the legal disputes between John Legate, printer to Cambridge University, and Christopher Barker, who had held an exclusive patent to print the Bible. Legate encroached on the patent in 1591 by printing the whole Geneva Bible in a compact octavo (STC 2155) as well as an undated 32 mo. edition (STC 2889) "Barker protested vigorously to the Privy Council. The letter of June 1591 from the Vice- Chancellor and Heads of Cambridge University to Lord Burghley pleading Legate's case provides an entirely unique, precise reference to an Elizabethan printer's intended market: 'The suit . is so prejudicial to the poor man . it could not but tend to his utter undoing." Barker may have trying to undercut those arguments, by printing a poor man's bible that could evade the restrictions of the Stationers' Company, whereby the minimum allowable price for a book was set according to the size of the type (an octavo edition ran 3 shillings) (See : Taylor, Greg and Lavagnino, John. Thomas Middleton and Early Modern Textual Culture, 2007. p. 204).

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Bibliographic Details

Title: TUDOR THE FIRST PRINTING OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IN MINIATURE FORMAT IN ENGLAND
Publisher: BARKER
Publication Date: 1591
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: 1st Edition
Condition: Fine

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Konstantinopel ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLERS.
Netherlands

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