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Notes
Part of the research for this essay was done in 1989 while I was a Harold White Fellow of the National Library of Australia, for whose friendly staff and generous facilities my wife and I are very grateful. The substance of the essay was given in a lecture entitled "Puritans and Pirates" delivered at the Annual General Meeting of the Oxford Bibliographical Society in April 1993. I am grateful for much advice concerning English illustrated Bibles, particularly from Elizabeth M. Ingram, B. J. McMullin, and Catherine Delano-Smith.
The first complete (though unauthorized) English Bible is Biblia: The Byble [tr. Miles Coverdale] ([?Cologne: ?E. Cervicornus & J. Soter,] 1535) which is illustrated with 63 small, anonymous woodcuts mostly copied from those by Hans Sebald Beham in Biblische Historien (Frankfort, 1533). The scene of St Paul writing heads all his epistles. It was reprinted as Biblia: The byble . . . truly and purely translated into Englysch by Thomas Matthew [i.e., Coverdale and Tyndale] ([Antwerp: Printed by M. Crom for Richard Grafton & Edward Whitchurch,] 1537) with 69 woodblocks, mostly c. 2" x 2" (copying those by Beham), first used in Storys and prophesis out of the Holy Scriptur, garnyschede wiih faire ymages, and with deuoute praeirs [by Nicholas Coppyn] [tr. from the Dutch] (Andwarpe: Simon Cowke, 1536), plus many large initials of Death and the Jester.
See James Strachan, Early Bible Illustrations: A Short Study of Some Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Century Printed Texts (1957), which focuses upon the pictorial antecedents of Henry VIII's Great Bible.
Some publishers were willing to print their plates in a variety of sizes for binding with Bibles in different formats. For instance, in the imprint of his Histoire Sacrée (1728), M. de Marne said: "Il fournira les même 500 Planches sur telle grandeur de papier que l'on souhattera"; the copy I have seen (British Library: 7 c 3-5) has two octavo-size prints on a quarto-size leaf.
An image of the deity designed by Virgil Solis in a Dutch Bible (Cologne, 1566) was replaced by the Hebrew letters JHVH when the same woodcuts were reprinted in the Bishops' Bible (London, 1568) (according to Colin Clair, "The Bishops' Bible 1568", Gutenberg Jahrbuch [1962], 289).
See B. J. McMullin, "Towards a Bibliography of the Oxford and Cambridge University Bible Presses in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries", Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 17.2 (1991), 51-71.
Note that apparently the only significant illustrated editions of the English Bible between 1611 and 1659 were those published in London by Robert Barker in 1611 and 1616 and the Geneva Bible published in Amsterdam by Thomas Stafford in 1640 and 1644, all in folio.
Their popularity lasted another half-century, for I have found them in Bibles published as late as 1783.
The author's name is given variously as le Sieur de Royaumont and Monsieur le Maitre de Sacy (1713) and even, mendaciously in English versions of 1815 and 1826, as Joseph Reeves (the translator), but it apparently should be Nicholas Fontaine.
"Orders of the Delegates of the Press" (1757 ff), p. 265, in Oxford University Press archives (like the next two documents quoted). Macklin may have applied to Oxford, rather than to the King's printer in London, because his printer Thomas Bensley was one of Oxford's two "Partners in the Bible trade" (according to the "Minutes of the Committee appointed by the Delegates of the Press for conferring with the Partners in the Bible trade").
However, there are a few notes in this edition, both at the feet of the pages and at the back, and other editions by the patentees are similar.
Certainly the patentees occasionally published illustrated editions, such as John Field's great Holy Bible of 1659-60 and John Baskett's equally ambitious Holy Bible of 1716-17.
The device was not, however, new, for, according to the "Account of our [i.e., Oxford University Press] hearing before the King and Council 16 January 1679/80 upon a Complaint of the King's printers of Bibles against the University of Oxford and their printer for printing Bibles and Testaments in small volumes [i.e., in formats smaller than quarto, to which the King's Printer claimed the exclusive right]" (MS in Oxford University Press archives), the London copyright holders claimed that the printers "at Oxford . . . print a Bible in Quarto; and so order it that the Marginal Notes in some of the Copies being left out, if in those the Margin be cut close away, they will not be much larger than a large octavo (and these be those which the London printers complain of as being pretended to be Quartos but being really octavos)". This practice, apparently not denied by Oxford, implies Oxford's recognition at the time that their copyright was only for large-format (i.e., learned) Bibles. However, in later years Oxford printed small-format Bibles without challenge. The 1680 petition was dismissed by the King and Council on the grounds that the case ought to be decided at law, and "Since 1685 no attempt has been made by the Stationers' Company or the King's Printer or any other person to question the authority of the University to print Bibles and all books of every description" (Anonymous summary "Of the Privilege of the University of Oxford to Print Bibles" [Privately printed for the Delegates of the Clarendon Press, January 11, 1898; "Proof" in Oxford University Press archives]).
However, Moses Pitt advertised in the imprint of The Holy Bible in Sculpture (1683) that at his "said Shop Bibles . . . are to be sold that are printed at the Theater in Oxford [i.e., the Clarendon Press]," indicating that it was the print-publisher who specialized in the University Printer's Bibles rather than the University Printer who specialized in Pitt's Bible illustrations.
In the account of copies, the location symbols are as follows:
- Australia National Library of Australia (Canberra, Australia)
- Bible Society British and Foreign Bible Society, now housed in Cambridge University Library (Cambridge, England)
- Bodley Bodleian Library (Oxford, England)
- British Library British Library (London, England)
- British Museum Print Room Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum (London, England)
- California University of California (Los Angeles, U.S.A.)
- Chicago Regenstein Library, University of Chicago (Chicago, U.S.A.)
- Huntington Huntington Library (San Marino, California, U.S.A.)
- Melbourne University of Melbourne (Melbourne, Australia)
- New South Wales State Library of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia)
- Opie Collection, Bodley The works thus described were seen in the home of Mrs Opie but have since passed to Bodley
- South Australia State Library of South Australia (Adelaide, Australia)
- Victoria State Library of Victoria (Melbourne, Australia)
- Victoria & Albert Victoria & Albert Museum (London, England)
There were a number of very distinguished engravers named Visscher, and the name appeared in various forms. For instance, Nicholas Visscher is the same as Claes Jansz Visscher and Nicolao Iohannis Piscator. He is apparently responsible for Theatrum Passionis et Mortis Domini ac Servatoris Nostri Iesu Christi (no imprint), with the 1701 Holy Bible below, and for Theatrum Biblicum (Amsterdam, 1674), which I have not seen.
The Bible & Sun is at Amen Corner on the Bible title-page with the 1726 Bible (Victoria), but it was altered to Ludgate Hill on the title-pages of The Holy Bible and The Book of Common Prayer with the 1758 Bible (Chicago). The versions in Bibles of 1733 (Bible Society) and 1756 (Bible Society) bear the name of Sturt as the engraver of the Ware Bible title-page.
Catherine Delano-Smith, "Maps in Bibles in the Sixteenth Century", Map Collector (June 1987), 2-15, remarks that Latin Bibles, from the first illustrated one in 1455, generally omitted maps, that the first Bible with a printed map did not appear until 1525, and that maps, particularly realistic rather than emblematical ones, were associated with reformist zeal.
The Bodley copy of Wesley's Old Testament of 1704 (which bears the signature of "Charles Harper", the publisher) contains only the Old Testament, but it has an engraved title-page for The Old and New Testament (as in 1716, 1721 below) published by C. Harper in 1704 and a half-title (on Ww2) for The Historical Cuts of the Books call'd Apocrypha, Which having been usually admitted into these Collections, are only presented with their several Stories [?i.e., engravings]; the same are denied any Place in the Sacred Canon.
The sheets of John Hooke's 1716 Old Testament are the same as Charles Harper's of 1704, including the Errata, the lists of Harper's books, the engraved title-page to Vol. II with Harper's name as publisher, and the now-irrelevant dedication to Queen Anne (d. 1714).
There was a Third Edition in 1718, a Fourth Edition in 1725 (published by E. & R. Nutt and J. Hooke, inter alia), a Fifth Edition in 1729, a Sixth Edition in 1752, and much later editions of London (1806-7) and of Philadelphia (1806; 1807; 1807-8).
The Bodley copy (Montagu 208) lacks the Sturt plates, but they are present in the British Library copies <3129 d 27 and 1490 b 3>.
I compared the Howell plates with those in The Historical Part of the Holy Bible bound with the 1765 Holy Bible (see below).
I take it that "Folio", "Quarto", and "Octavo" here refer to the size of the paper rather than to the size of the engravings. For instance, in The Holy Bible of 1722-23, there are four of Sturt's octavo-size designs on each folio page.
I have not seen the 1722-23 Bible, and it is reported here only on the authority of Darlow & Moule, no. 965.
The copy of the 1765 Baskett quarto Bible in New South Wales <Q220-/1A1> bears the bookplate of Captain Cook and 93 quite different prints.
See Catherine Delano-Smith & Elizabeth M. Ingram, Maps in Bibles in the British Library, Finding List: 1500-1600 (Nottingham: University of Nottingham, 1988), for extraordinarily detailed information about maps in early Bibles, including which blocks were used in each Bible and whence and where each was copied. They show that, among the sixteenth-century Bibles in the British Library, there were maps in over half (54%) of the English Bibles, in somewhat less than half of the Dutch (42%), French (21%), and German (31%) Bibles, but in less than 3% of those in Latin (p. 21). Almost all the maps in British sixteenth-century Bibles listed there represent (1) Eden, (2) Exodus, (3) Canaan, (4) the Holy Land, and (5) the Eastern Mediterranean.
In the same volume is a frontispiece (Ludovicus Dempsy Dublini, 1735) and four anonymous double-page maps published by George Grierson; apparently this is the evidence on which the British Library dated The Historical Part in 1735. However, these plates were evidently first issued independently of both The Holy Bible (1740) and The Historical Part (n.d.), and the presence of the three works within the same covers probably indicates little about the date of The Historical Part.
It is advertised in Calmet's Great Dictionary of the Holy Bible . . . Revised, Corrected [fairly high-handedly], and Augmented, with an entirely new set of Plates, explanatory, illustrative, and ornamental; under the direction of C. Taylor (London: Charles Taylor, 1797-1801) as Scripture Illustrated: a Companion to the Holy Bible . . . Accompanied by Numerous Engravings . . . [which] will begin to be published on January 1, 1802 <British Library: 676 f 5>; in a prospectus <Bodley: John Johnson Prospectus Box No. A90> it is called Scripture Illustrated By Engravings referring to Natural Scenery Parts 1-6 ready at 5s., Parts 7-8 yet to come).
My information about the editions of A Curious Hieroglyphic Bible derives chiefly from W. A. Clouston, Hieroglyphic Bibles: their origin and history (1894), 8-10, and Darlow & Moule, no. 1299.
Some of the more notable suites of English Bible illustrations from 1831 to 1850 were:
- 1833 John Landseer, A Series of Engravings, illustrating . . . Important Events Recorded in the Sacred Scriptures 2°
- 1834 Biblical Keepsake: or, Landscape Illustrations of the most remarkable places mentioned in The Holy Scriptures . . . made from original sketches taken on the spot, and Engraved by W. and E. Finden. With descriptions of the plates by the Rev. Thomas Hartwell (London: John Murray & Charles Tilt [?1834]) <British Library: 10077 e 19; 1784 i 30> 8°
- 1834 The Pictorial History of the Bible, consisting of engravings from Paintings by British Artists (London: John McGowan) <British Library: 31320 d 16; 690 f 19> 4°
- 1835 Illustrations of the Bible by Westall and Martin With Descriptions of the Rev. Hobart Caunter, B.D. (London: Edward Churton, 26, Holles Street) <BL: 3125 h 6> with very small plates (6.3 x 10.0 cm) on very large leaves (24.0 x 32.0 cm) 2° (London: C. Todd, 1839) <Huntington: 401085; British Museum Print Room: 166 * C 25, 26> 2°
- (1879) <British Library> 2°
- 1835 The Pictorial History of the Bible Consisting of Engravings from Paintings by the Great Masters (London: John McGowan) <British Library: 1762 b 2>, with 84 plates which are said (absurdly) to form the first work of its kind, though all 39 of the prints by English artists are apparently copied from those in the Macklin Bible of 1791-1800 4°
- 1838 Illustrations to the Bible Designed and Engraved by John Martin (London: Charles Tilt) <Norwich Cathedral Library> 4°
- 1838 Scripture Illustrations; being A Series of Engravings on Steel and Wood, illustrating The Geography and Topography of the Bible, and Demonstrating the Truth of the Scriptures from the Face of Nature and the Remains of the Works of Man, with Explanations and Remarks By the Rev. J. A. La Trobe (London: L. & G. Seeley, J. Hatchard & Son, R. B. Seeley, & W. Burnside) <British Library: 689 f 13> 4°
- 1847 The Gallery of Scripture Engravings, Historical and Landscape, with Descriptions, Historical, Geographical, and Pictorial, by John Kitto ([London:] Peter Jackson, Late Fisher, Son & Co, The Caxton Press [1847]) <Huntington: N8020K58>, titles in French and English 4° This is an outgrowth of the enormously extensive collection of Bible illustrations by Kitto with a specially printed folio title-page: THE | HOLY BIBLE | ACCORDING TO | [Gothic:] The Authorized Version; | CONTAINING THE | OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. | WITH | [Gothic:] Copious Original Notes, | BY J. KITTO, D.D. | VOL. I. [&c]. | LONDON: WM. S. ORR, AND CO. [?1837] <Huntington>
According to Colin Clair, "The Bishops' Bible 1568", Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1962), 287-290, the Solis wood engravings appeared in the folio Lutheran Bible (Franckfurt: David Zopfel, Johann Rasch, Sigmund Feyerabend, 1560) and were copied in the woodcuts first printed in a Dutch Bible (Cologne: The Heirs of Arnold Birckman, 1566), reprinted in England in the folio Bishops' Bible (1568), and again in the folio Biblia Latina (Antwerp: The Widow and Heirs of Jan Steels): "Thus we have the curious instance of a whole series of wood engravings being used to illustrate in turn a German Lutheran Bible, a Dutch Bible, an English Episcopalian Bible, and the Latin Vulgate!" (p. 288).
The Holy Bible (London: John Baskett, And the Assigns of Thomas Newcomb and Henry Hills, deceas'd, 1722, 1723) in Bodley (Bib Eng 1723 b 2), extra-illustrated with prints from this work, was evidently the Mortier family Bible. Facing the manuscript Table of Cuts in Vol. I are details of [name cut off] Mortier (born 25 Nov. 1673 in Amsterdam) who married Esther North (b. 1692) on 12 May 1709 and of their children born in London (1711 and 1721 [buried in Chelsey in 1722]) and in Amsterdam (1712 [christened at the Episcopal Church], 1713, 1714 [Peter (sic), buried in Amsterdam in 1719], and 1716 [died in Amsterdam in 1718]). Apparently the family was in Amsterdam in 1712-19 and in London in 1709, 1711, and 1722.
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