“IF EVERYTHING ELSE IN OUR LANGUAGE SHOULD PERISH, IT WOULD ALONE SUFFICE…”: 1815 OXFORD KING JAMES BIBLE, IN HANDSOME FULL CONTEMPORARY BINDING

BIBLE. The Holy Bible. Oxford: Printed at the Clarendon Press by Bensley, Cooke, and Collingwood, 1815. 16mo (3-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches), contemporary full straight-grain red morocco, elaborately gilt-decorated spine and boards, all edges gilt. $2200.

Handsomely bound 1815 Oxford pocket-sized edition of the King James Bible.

First published in 1611 and indisputably the most influential of English Bible translations, the King James Version has exercised incalculable influence on piety, language and literature. Macaulay praised it as "a book, which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power" (PMM 114). Does not include Apocrypha. Herbert 1616; not in Darlow & Moule. Contemporary owner signature of Harriet Carmichael-Smyth, dated on her wedding day in 1816, with records below of the birth of two of her children; later genealogical notes in pencil.

A beautiful copy in fine condition.