Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments by BIBLE IN ENGLISH - 1850: Translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches.

London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow: William Mackenzie, 1850. BIBLE IN ENGLISH; MARTIN, John. A Family Bible with Six of the John Martin Bible Illustrations

[BIBLE IN ENGLISH]. The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by His Majesty's special command. Appointed to be read in churches. London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow: William Mackenzie, [n.d., ca. 1850].

Folio. (Measures 9 3/4 x 13 x 5/12 x 3 3/4 in. (thick); 250 x 335 x 93 mm. (thick). Illustrated with thirty full-page engravings by various artists, including a frontispiece and a vignette title-page (titled The Family Bible, With Copious Notes and References), two engravings by J. Stephens from photographs of the Holy Land by Frith, and six engravings after John Martin's Old Testament illustrations ("The Fall of Man," "The Destruction of Pharaoh's Host," "Joshua commanding the sun to stand still," "By Babel's Streams We Sat and Wept," "Belshazzar's Feast," and "The Fall of Nineveh").

Contemporary black polished calf over bevelled boards, covers tooled in gilt and blind, spine lettered and decoratively tooled in gilt in compartments. Gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers. All edges gilt. Minimal wear to extremities. Hinges neatly reinforced. A bright, fresh copy throughout. Near fine.

Martin's Biblical paintings are among the finest ever produced: "The spirit in which Martin worked is suggested by a passage in his catalogue for the large oil painting ‘The Fall of Nineveh,' which he exhibited in lonely magnificence in 1827: ‘The mighty cities of Nineveh and Babylon have long since passed away. The accounts of their greatness and splendor may have been exaggerated. But, where strict truth is not essential, the mind is content to find delight in the contemplation of the grand and the marvelous. Into the solemn visions of antiquity we look without demanding the clear daylight of truth. Seen through the mist of ages, the great becomes gigantic, the wonderful swells into the sublime'" (Ray, The Illustrator and the Book in England from 1790 to 1914, p. 44).

At the front of the Bible are three leaves of a family history, partially inscribed with the births, deaths, and marriages of three generations of the Hubbard family of Derby, England, during the years 1889-1943. A lovely example of a nineteenth-century Bible.

HBS 67639.

$3,000.