The Self-Interpreting Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments According to the Authorized Version; With an Introduction; Marginal References and Illustrations; A Summary of the Several Books; An Analysis of Each Chapter; A Paraphrase and Evangelical Reflections Upon the Most Important Passages, and Numerous Explanatory Notes
New York: Johnson, Fry and Company, [1859]. Very Good. Item #6452
New York: Johnson, Fry and Company, [1859]. Folio (16.5" x 11.5"); xvii, 743, 1-122 (Apocrypha), 747-1026. 37 plates with tissue guards including engraved title, vignette frontis for New Testament, and two pages engraved family register (blank). Elaborately blindstamped leather covers with gilt title lettering and gilt to all page edges. Two sources call for either 73 or 74 plates, so missing about half. Also missing final pages 1027-1030, with text ending halfway through Revelation 18:10 and so lacks the concluding 14.5 verses (#cliffhanger).
Rebacked in later matching leather with original covers and majority of spine retained. Engraved title and full title pages mounted on new thick paper and bound in. Boards heavily rubbed at corners and more lightly along edges and surface, with gilt lettering dulled to front. Pages occasionally show expected shallow, marginal nicks and some toning and light foxing, with occasional faint offsetting from plates, though mostly the tissue guards have done their jobs. Most plates clean and crisp, with a few showing some foxing in the margins. Binding is sound and pages unmarked.
Scottish minster John Brown of Haddington first published his Self-Interpreting Bible in Edinburgh in 1778 as a complete Bible for ordinary people, compiling commentaries, explanatory notes, and numerous references "to render the oracles of God their own interpreter, and enable every serious reader to judge for himself what doctrines ought to be believed and what duties practised by the Christian." Irish minster Henry Cooke took up the editing of this new edition, which first appeared in Britain in 1855. O'Callaghan's bibliography, A List of the Holy Scriptures and Parts Thereof Printed in America Previous to 1860, mentions this edition was "published in parts, and is just finished," adding that it "includes matter from the Commentaries of Scott, D'Oyly, Mant, and others" and that "a great many of the plates are the same as in Johnson & Co.'s edition of Rutter's Life of Christ." Reprinted with occasional edits and different plates through the rest of the century, often by the American Publishing Company.
[O'Callaghan, A List of Editions of the Holy Scriptures... p. 371; Wright, Early Bibles of America pp 111-112; Hills, The English Bible in America p. 249].
Price: $350.00