Apr 14, 2015 - Sale 2380

Sale 2380 - Lot 62

Price Realized: $ 1,062
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 800 - $ 1,200
FIRST CATHOLIC FOLIO BIBLE IN AMERICA (BIBLE IN ENGLISH.) The Holy Bible, Translated from the Latin Vulgate. 20 plates. ix, [2], 14-812, [3]-409, [7], xii, 367, [9] pages. 2 volumes in one. Folio, modern cloth; frontispiece and title page reinforced at edges, moderate dampstaining and foxing, lacking the 3-page subscriber list and folding table found in some copies; family register sheet between Apocrypha and New Testament with entries in manuscript. Philadelphia: Eugene Cummiskey, 1825

Additional Details

"A majestic volume . . . the only Catholic folio Bible we have ever had in this country"--Parsons, "Early Catholic Publishers of Philadelphia," in Catholic Historical Review 24:2 (July 1938), pages 141-152. A thousand were printed, but sales were disappointing and many copies were apparently used as waste paper. A Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible following Haydock's 1811 London edition, with some of the plates engraved by William Woodruff of Philadelphia. The family register records the marriage of John Waters and Hannah Dawson of Northampton, MA, 1820; and the family of Irish-born factory worker James Bellew of Gloucester, NJ, 1865-1927. Hills 518; Shea, Bibliographical Account of Catholic Bibles, page 15. None traced at auction since a Swann sale, 30 January 1975, lot 26.