1850 Forshall and Madden First Complete Printed Wycliffe Bible

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New testament, with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Version made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and His Followers.

Description

4 vols. in Royal 4to. Text in two column Roman font with the earlier and later Wycliffe versions presented side by side. Printed title page (1850) to each volume. Errata to rear of volume 4.

Pagination

[2],lxiv,687,[1]; [2],888; [2], 897, [1]; [2],749,[3] pp.

Condition

Bookplate of S. Edmund’s College to front pastedown. Lightly rubbed. Infrequent marginal annotations but overall clean and bright.

Note

Although portions of the Wycliffe Bible were previously published—such as Clarke’s Song of Solomon (1825) and Wilson’s New Testament (1731)—this is the first comprehensive scholarly edition of John Wycliffe’s 14th-century English Bible. Compiled by British Museum librarians Josiah Forshall and Frederic Madden, the work meticulously transcribes and compares 170 manuscripts, preserving both the early and later versions of Wycliffe’s translation from the Latin Vulgate.

John Wycliffe (c. 1328–1384), known as the "Morning Star of the Reformation," was an English theologian and reformer who challenged Church authority. He emphasized the primacy of Scripture and advocated translating the Bible into English. Wycliffe and his associates undertook the translation into the common tongue, with Wycliffe himself likely translating the Gospels and possibly the entire New Testament.

References

Herbert 1876; STC 1178.