BIBLE, IN ENGLISH, GENEVA VERSION
[The Bible: that is, the Holy Scriptures contained in the Old and the New Testament], woodcut initials and end-pieces, double column, roman letter, lacks 11 leaves (A1-A8, Ss4-Ss5, and Nnn6), B1 with loss to lower half of leaf, bound with incomplete copies of the Book of Common Prayer, and Book of Psalmes (with title, for Richard Day, 1591, ESTC S5288), shaved with some loss to headlines and side-notes, nineteenth century calf gilt, black morocco gilt spine label, rubbed at extremities, preserved in modern morocco-backed solander box [ESTC S5180, citing 3 copies only: British Library, Cambridge University Library, and the Bodleian; Herbert 208], 8vo, [Cambridge, John Legate, 1591]
Footnotes:
RARE. THE EARLIEST EDITION OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE PRINTED AT CAMBRIDGE. No further complete editions of the Bible were printed in Cambridge (or indeed elsewhere outside London) until 1629. Published by John Legate, university printer at Cambridge, who 'printed his small octavo Bible in roman type using the Geneva Version, then the preferred version of puritan readers... It was the Bible of Shakespeare and Bunyan, and the first settlers in North America' (Michael Black, A Short History of Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Provenance: Silas Kerslake, 1733 above note '... was bound ye month of December', inscription on Aa4 (end of Apocrypha); Sarah Allen, 8 November 1862; gifted by Allen, of Lydeard St. Lawrence, to F. Martin, of Bishop Lydeard, Somerset on 16 September 1875, inscriptions on front free endpaper; Sotheby's, 17 December 2008.
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