WITH NOTES FOR INFIDELS AND THOSE OF MEAN CAPACITY
[BIBLE.]
FORTESCU, Alexander, editor. The Holy Family Bible, containing the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Apocrypha at Large: with concise Notes on all the difficult Texts of Scripture, wherein the Objections of Infidels are obviated, and the obscure Passages explained to the meanest Capacity. Illustrated with Copper-Plates …
Winchester: Printed for the Proprietor by John Wilkes, and sold by him, and William Harris … London. 1774.
Large 8vo, pp. [1434], printed in two columns, with an engraved frontispiece by Taylor after Samuel Wale, and twelve engraved plates; some occasional light foxing but a very good copy, in attractive contemporary red straight-grain morocco, front cover gilt with a border of floral tools, spine gilt in compartments, turn-ins gilt with diagonal stripes; contemporary printed book-label of William Henry Gater.
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FORTESCU, Alexander, editor. The Holy Family Bible, containing the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, and the Apocrypha at Large: with concise Notes on all the difficult Texts of Scripture, wherein the Objections of Infidels are obviated, and the obscure Passages explained to the meanest Capacity. Illustrated with Copper-Plates …
First edition, very rare, of a provincially-printed Bible, with original notes and additional matter by Alexander Fortescu, Rector of Stretton. Fortescu took as his source text the Cambridge folio Bible printed by Field in 1659, adding a short summary text at the head of each book, and explanatory footnotes throughout. At the end are a ‘New Explanation of the Holy Bible by Question and Answer’ (26 pages), and a ‘New accented Dictionary of the Names and Places mentioned in the Holy Bible’ (20 pages).
A ‘second edition’, printed in two vols 4to in 1777, features an entirely different set of notes, and omits the catechistical section and the dictionary (one recorded copy includes it, and it is listed separately in ESTC). A third edition appeared in Bristol in 1778. The printer John Wilkes, of Winchester, was later printer of the Hampshire Chronicle (1778–84), and compiler of the Encyclopaedia Londinensis (1801–28), but was also implicated in the sale of false lottery tickets in the 1780s.
For a substantial, illustrated work, Fortescu’s Bible is unaccountably rare. ESTC records two copies only: BL and Bodley, and no more are added by Library Hub or OCLC. We have also traced a sale record for another copy in an identical binding with the printed label ‘Jacob Gater’ – presumably bought at the same time.
Darlow & Moule 1237; Alston III, 733 records the second edition only.
