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VERSE BIBLE IN RICHLY GOLD-TOOLED RED MOROCCO
WITH 12 ENGRAVINGS
[BIBLE - FRENCH - MINIATURE - VERSE]. DU BOIS, J.P.J. La Sainte Bible, mise en vers ... Nouv. edition, corrigée & augmentée.
The Hague, Pieter Servaas, 1762[-1763].
WITH: Le Nouveau Testament, mis en vers ... Nouv. edition. corrigée & augmentée.
The Hague, Pieter Servaas, 1762[-1763]. Foolscap 64mo in 8s (Binding 5.3 x 3.7 x 1.9 cm). 2 parts in 1 volume. With engraved frontispiece, 11 other engraved illustration plates (4.3 x 2.7 cm), diamond-head music and head- and tailpieces built up from fleurons. Contemporary richly gold-tooled red morocco (using one stamp from the so-called first "stadhouderlijke" bindery, but probably by a different binder just after the tools were dispersed in 1764), gold-tooled board edges, marbled endpapers, gilt edges.
| Orders and Information | € 2750 |
Rare 1762/63 edition (the first with significant revisions and additions) of a miniature Walloon Bible (Old and New Testament) in a French verse paraphrase by J.P.J. Du Bois after the English original by John Taylor (1614), with 12 engraved plates. By the publisher of the first French edition of 1750, the present copy in richly gold-tooled red morocco by an unidentified binder, using one of the stamps of one of the best and most famous Dutch binderies of the eighteenth century. The Bible itself is followed by the ten commandments set to music (diamond head notes on a 4.5 mm staff), a prayer ("Sonnet en Bouts Rimés"), lists of the chapters, the approbation for the present "seconde edition" by the "conducteurs" of the Walloon church (24 April 1763), an extract from its pastor P. Franck's accompanying letter (same date) praising the text and the idea, and the (publisher's) anonymous Avis, praising the book's merits for young people and schools and noting that he has added 58 verses to the first edition's 752 to make 810 altogether, and added the ten commandments with music, the prayer and the list of chapters. He also notes that the twelve engraved plates, showing biblical scenes, are new. We have located only three other copies, including one incomplete.
After several years in Queen Elizabeth's navy the colourful and adventurous Royalist John Taylor (1580-1653) worked as a Thames waterman (a sort of river taxi), but supplemented his income by writing occasional verse and then began publishing some of his work, dubbing himself "the Water Poet." He gained the patronage of the royal family, Ben Jonson and many others, and published his English verse paraphrase of the Old and New Testaments in 1614 (STC 23810). It measured about 3.2 x 2.9 cm and was intended for children. Du Bois's French rendition is normally dated 1752, but the John Rylands Library in Manchester reports a 1750 edition, apparently published anonymously by Servaas, who signed those of 1752, 1754, 1762/63 (extensively revised by Du Bois), 1782 and an undated "4th" edition, and editions appeared in Geneva and elsewhere from 1759. The New Testament has its own title-page, but continues the printer's signatures and pagination of the Old Testament. Most of the plates are signed "JB" (the author or Jan Besoet?) but some also show traces of an inscription removed from the plates. Servaas's editions are usually described as 24mos or 32mos, but at least the present is a 64mo (2 1/4 sheets for the letterpress and perhaps another 1/4 sheet printed from a single copper plate for the twelve illustrations), on foolscap paper with an Amsterdam coat of arms watermark. In the nineteenth century, such miniature Bibles were dubbed "Thumb Bibles."
The flower on the spine of the present copy comes from the so-called first "stadhouderlijke" bindery (Storm van Leeuwen, Haagse Boekbanden , p. 391, stamp 12), but they did not use the other stamps and rolls, such as the lovely mirrored double-flower stamp in the centre of each board. Their tools are believed to have been dispersed on the death of the widow of Johannes Stofvoet in 1764, so another binder probably bound the present book immediately after that.
Slightly foxed but still in good condition. The binding also good, with minor tears in the spine and the fore-edge corners abraded. A lovely little Bible in a lovely contemporary binding.
