THE MACKLIN BIBLE
[BIBLE.]
The Holy Bible. The Old Testament (& New Testament), embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists …
London: Printed for Thomas Macklin, by Thomas Bensley, 1800.
6 vols, large folio, each with a half-title; a total of 70 etched and engraved plates (dated between 1791 and 1800) and 100 engraved vignettes; some scattered foxing as always, but withal a fine copy in an extremely handsome though unsigned contemporary binding of panelled and diced russia, covers with wide roll-tool gilt borders and small floriate elements, spines gilt in six compartments with wide roll-tools and a central wheel and sunburst, lettered direct, raised double bands, dentelles gilt, leather hinges, double endbands sewn in blue, green, yellow, white and black silk thread, all edges gilt.
Added to your basket:
The Holy Bible. The Old Testament (& New Testament), embellished with Engravings, from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists …
A wonderful set, in an extremely attractive contemporary binding, of this monumental feat of British printing, the grandest and most ambitious of all English Bibles. Printed on a new, thick wove Whatman paper in a specially designed large type, and illustrated with seventy full-page engravings after Fuseli, Reynolds, Kauffman, West, and others, and a suite of emblematic ornamental head and tail-pieces by Loutherbourg, Macklin’s Bible was the culmination of a project that had begun as early as 1789. It was an enormously expensive venture – Reynolds alone was paid £500 for his illustration of the Holy Family – which nearly bankrupted Macklin, and one which he himself never saw finished; he died before the last of the vignettes had been completed.
A matching edition of the Apocrypha was printed in 1816 and, as often, is not found here.
Herbert 1442.
Note: this item is extremely heavy, and will attract commensurate shipping charges.
