American Bible Society Editions

Family Bibles

The American Bible Society, still active today, was formed in 1816 from 34 local Bible societies with the goal of distributing Bibles—ideally, to every household. The society printed millions of Bibles in the nineteenth century. Its simple, low-cost editions of the King James Bible, produced “without note or comment,” were considered highly accurate and often cited as a standard by other publishers.

In its quest to produce so many Bibles, the society embraced numerous printing advances. Like many other Bibles of the day, this 1827 Bible title page mentions the then-new process of “stereotyping,” in which movable type was set, then used to create plaster of paris forms. New plates were cast from the stored forms with no need to set the type again, saving time and avoiding new errors.

The society also adopted steam-powered presses, which doubled or quadrupled the output of a conventional manual press. This title page credits the society’s printer, Daniel Fanshaw, who bought the first steam press in New York in 1826. By 1830, he had sixteen steam presses, all devoted to American Bible Society editions. An eccentric man who never wore an overcoat, Fanshaw continued to print the society’s Bibles until 1844, when the arrangement ended over a business dispute.

A major source of domestic American Bibles, the American Bible Society also indirectly shaped the format of commercial Bibles. Unable to match the society’s low prices, publishers turned instead to the higher end of the market, producing handsomely bound and printed family Bibles packed with ever more supplements and illustrations.

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