The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New. by Bible in English - 1763: Translated out of the Original Tongues, and With the Former Translations Diligently Compared and Revised, by His Majesty's Special Command....

Cambridge: John Baskerville, 1763. Very Good/Printing a grand bible had been Baskerville's cherished ambition, but the royal privilege belonged exclusively to Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Consequently, Baskerville applied and was elected printer to the University of Cambridge. An innovator, a micromanager, a workaholic, and an exacting perfectionist, he threw everything into the bible project. He invented a stiffer, blacker ink for it, designed the types and the page layout, and demanded smoother paper than was generally available. Ultimately, he emptied his own bank accounts and borrowed money when the support of subscribers failed. Indeed, he was not able to sell the entire edition of 1,250 copies, and ended up remaindering more than a third of the press run for pence on the guinea, to his enormous personal disappointment and financial pain. The book remains a landmark in the history of English printing, "one of the most beautiful books printed in the world," according to the bibliographer Frognall Dibdin, a sentiment frequently echoed in Great Britain. This copy with the third (longest) list of subscribers, ending with York. The extraordinary 18th-century Jesuit binding must have been "married" to this King James text later in the 19th century or the 20th (a mixed marriage).. Imperial folio (50 cm); [573] leaves. Text in double columns. Magnificently bound in contemporary red straight grain morocco bordered in gilt with five separate tools, among them a double-helix, a Greek key, a fillet, and a double pearl-and-vine scroll, with Jesuit trigram in gilt over red inlaid in central contrasting green losenge, surrounded by two concentric ovals of putti, stars, garlands, and flames tooled in gilt. Green silk place-marker. Mid-nineteenth-century gift inscription and family records in manuscript on blank leaf. Joints and edges rubbed. A bright copy. References: Gaskell, "John Baskerville, a Bibliography," 26; Rothschild, 2640; Darlow & Moule, 857.