THE GREAT POLYGLOT BIBLES INCLUDING A LEAF FROM THE COMPLUTENSIAN OF ACALÁ, 1514–1517 BY BASIL HALL, LECTURER IN ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY 1966

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[illustration] | [illustration] | THE GREAT POLYGLOT BIBLES | INCLUDING

A LEAF FROM THE | COMPLUTENSIAN OF ACALÁ,

1514–1517 | BY BASIL HALL, LECTURER IN ECCLESIASTICAL |

HISTORY, THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE | [illustration] |

PUBLISHED FOR | ITS MEMBERS BY | THE BOOK CLUB OF CALIFORNIA

| SAN FRANCISCO, 1966 | [illustration] | [illustration]

 

15 × 10 ¾. 52 pp.—blank (i–vi), half-title (vii), blank (viii), title (ix), blank (x),

page of limitation (xi), blank (xii), illustration (xiii), blank (xiv), facsimile page

with original leaf tipped on (xv), blank (xvi), divisional title (1), blank (2), text

(3–27), acknowledgments and notes (28), blank (29–36).

 

Title in red and black, divisional title in violet and black, marginal running

titles in red, initial letters in text in violet. Reproductions of illustrations and

decorations throughout text from the Complutensian Bible and other early 16th

century Spanish books. Type Italian Old Style, monotype. Paper mold made.

Presented in the “continental” manner, according to the printers, with unsewn

folded sheets enclosed in a terra cotta handmade paper cover with publisher and

title in violet and decoration in brown on front cover. The first and last gatherings

are enclosed in brown handmade paper covers. The entire work is further enclosed

in a violet cloth-covered hinged box with terra cotta labels printed in black

and violet on front cover and violet on back. A laid in card explains the correct

perusal of the unsewn sheets. 400 copies printed at the Allen Press (Lewis and

Dorothy Allen). Price $47.50.

One of the most famous books of the sixteenth century and the first of the great

polyglot Bibles, the so-called Complutensian Bible is paid full homage in this

sumptuous leaf book. The paper, a beautiful Rives mold made, was printed damp.

The type, although set by monotype, was respaced and reset by the Allens in an

attempt to realize a more perfect word spacing. In the new errata to the Club’s

reprinting of The Allen Press Bibliography (1986, #180, p. 121) the Allens speculate

that the dropped l in Alcalá on the title page may have been the single loose letter

of one galley referred to in their printing of the Bibliography (p. 62).

Done