ABSTRACT
The story of the English Bible has often been told, but the story of the Bible in England is still incomplete.1 It has been estimated that 465 editions and 101 variant editions of the Bible in English were published between 1525 and 1700, and that during the same period 217 editions and 26 variant editions of the New Testament in English were issued. By 1700 perhaps as many as 1,290,000 copies of the Bible in English and 545,000 copies of the New Testament in English had been printed. Even allowing for wear and tear, these figures suggest that many households possessed either an English Bible or New Testament. The Geneva version of the English Bible, produced by English exiles in the heartland of Calvinism, with its helpful if sometimes provocative marginalia, was eventually supplanted by the King James Bible or so-called Authorized Version of 1611, derived largely from the translation of William Tyndale (d.1536).2 The continued value of the Bible as a commodity is evident in the number of testators who were at pains to specify it among the possessions bequeathed to their heirs.3
