Apr 07, 2022 - Sale 2600

Sale 2600 - Lot 33

Unsold
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 4,000
(BIBLE IN ENGLISH.) Noah Webster, translator. The Holy Bible . . . with Amendments of the Language. xvi, 907 pages. 8vo, contemporary calf, worn, joints split and front board re-hinged; moderate foxing; early owner's signatures on free endpapers, later library markings. New Haven, CT: Durrie & Peck, 1833
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Additional Details

First edition of Webster's translation, one of the earliest American revisions to the King James version. Webster first conceived of updating the language of the Bible in 1822, but met with little encouragement. However, after the success of his 1828 Dictionary he revived the project with the mindset of producing a non-sectarian Bible to modernize archaic language, correct improper grammar and rectify mistranslations from the original Hebrew and Greek. He thought that "a version thus amended may require no alteration for two or three centuries to come" (Preface, page v). Hills 826; Wright, pages 141-48. Provenance: 19th-century ownership signatures of Luther P. Hubbard (undated) and R.T. Hall (1894); after ca. 1954 in the Howell Bible Collection, Pacific School of Religion (properly released). We trace 2 sold at auction since 1966.