The First American Bible a leaf from a Copy of the Bible translated into the Indian Language by John Eliot and printed at Cambridge in New England in the Year 1663
Boston: D.B. Updike at the Merrymount Press for Charles E. Goodspeed, 1929. Limited edition (157 copies).
Octavo (7 11/16” x 5 7/8”, 195mm x 149mm): pp. [2] (half-title, blank) 1-5 (title, copyright, fly-title, blank, text) 6-20. With a leaf (chapters 6-8 of Deuteronomy, leaf Yy3) of Eliot’s 1663 Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God tipped in on a stub.
Bound in the publisher’s deep brown cloth gilt. Top edge gilt.
Wear to the extremities. Front board bowed. Else fine. 1953 bookplate of Charles and Janelle Easley to the front paste-down.
John Eliot (ca. 1604–1690) — the “apostle to the Indians” — was Puritan missionary who emigrated to Boston in 1631. By 1640 he in cooperation with other churchmen in the region he published the Bay Psalm Book, the first book printed in North America. He then founded Roxbury Latin School (1645) and, after a study of the Massachusett (of the Algonquian family) language, published the first bible in America: the “Eliot Indian Bible” or Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God. It is the first “missionary bible,” i.e., a translation of scripture for the purpose of evangelization. The New Testament was published in 1661, and the complete Bible in 1663.
In the wake of the first world war, the damaged books of Europe came to be collected by Americans through the form of single-leaf editions. A deeply democratizing form of book circulation, these, often edited by luminaries in the field such as A.E. Newton, put vitally important texts in the hands of a great many more collectors than would otherwise be feasible. The present item was put together by George Parker Winship, one of America’s great librarians. He ran the John Carter Brown Library at Brown 1895–1915 and then served as the inaugural head of rare books at the new Widener Memorial Library at Harvard. His analysis places the precious leaf into its wider context.
Darlow & Moule 6737; ESTC W38287.
Item #JLR0405
Price: $2,150