[THUMB BIBLE.]
The Bible in Miniature, or a concise History of the Old and New Testaments. London, J. Harris, 1778.
64mo, pp. [2], 148, [4], 151–256; with an engraved general title-page, an engraved title-page to the New Testament, and thirteen other engraved plates; dusty at the extremities, a few leaves working loose, withal a very good copy in contemporary red morocco gilt, centre lozenge onlay in black morocco with IHS motif; early ownership inscription ‘MSC Southbrook’ to head of title.
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The Bible in Miniature, or a concise History of the Old and New Testaments.
A very rare thumb bible, the last Harris edition before its publication was taken over by Elizabeth Newbery. The attractive binding is nearly identical that used on the finer copies of other Harris editions and those of Newbery.
William Harris had printed an enormously influential thumb bible in 1771. Using a text based on Wilkin’s Biblia of 1727/8, with attractive illustrations, it was printed in two more editions under his name in 1774 and 1775, and one (the present) by his successor ‘J. Harris’, who is surely the John Harris (1756–1846) who became in 1780 manager for Elizabeth Newbery (this thumb bible is one of a very small number of titles published by J. Harris, all issued between 1777 and 1780). Newbery’s famous Bible in Miniuture (1780) followed Harris’s ‘almost word for word … with the same number of pages, engravings of the same subjects’ and ‘closely-similar’ title-pages, though with the distinctive misprint ‘Miniuture’. ‘The number of copies printed off must have been immense … [and] it was still being listed as for sale in 1800’. Harris bought the business from Newbery in 1801–2, when he reissued the bible under his own name and for Darton and Harvey.
ESTC records two copies only (BL, and Virginia). OCLC adds Michigan and Philadelphia Museum of Art. As with the other Harris editions, all of which are rare, the plate count seems to vary (see Roscoe) between twelve and fourteen – here there are thirteen.
ESTC T231883. Not in Bondy; Adomeit B25; Roscoe, Thumb Bibles 31.