Description
THE FAMILY BIBLE. Blackburn: Hemingway and Nuttall, 1796.
Thick 4to, Approx. 9.75″ x 8″. 1422 pp. (some misnumbering), plus contents leaf inserted at front, an Apocrypha with colophon bearing an Edinburgh imprint inserted between OT and NT (unpaged but complete.) Rebound in modern calf.
AN EXTREMELY SCARCE BLACKBURN IMPRINT, with notes and annotations by a variety of theologians such as Wesley, Tillotson, Grotius, Whitby, and numerous others. Printing in Blackburn had previously been mostly limited to broadsides or small pamphlets until a small number of more ambitious printers, such as Hemingway and Nuttall, came along and produced several large books at the end of the 1700s. This was an attempt at putting Blackburn on the map in terms of printing/publishing. But in the early 1800s it became easier for local booksellers to procure the latest printings from London; thus, Blackburn would never become a hub for printers. The present Bible is not listed in ESTC, and we find practically no reference to it at all in the usual places. OCLC 437253137 identifies another copy which has been described (defective); a plate is found in that copy (none in this copy), but whether or not it was originally issued with the Bible is unknown (in absence of proper references.) Very scarce. The New Testament title verso here bears the early signature of Christopher Wright.
Condition: Some light foxing and occasional small stain, some faded staining from lower margin beginning in Apocrypha and through the NT, ink-stains (NT title), occasional finger-soiling or similar, title soiled and with lower corner chipped and repaired, a few instances of shaved catchwords (mostly in Apocrypha), first few leaves with old water-stains along upper margin, one corner-chip with very slight loss of footnote. Overall Good
1796 Family Bible Hemingway and Nuttall
