Harper’s Illuminated Bible

Family Bibles

Sold as a series of 54 sections starting in 1843, the massive Harper’s Illuminated Bible was first published in full in this 1846 edition. It was printed again in 1859 and 1866. More than 1600 engravings of biblical figures and scenes, supplied by New York engraver and printer John Alexander Adams, are woven throughout the scriptural text, often several to a page. At Adams’s urging, The Illuminated Bible was the first book printed in the United States to use electrotyping, a process that preserves fine detail in heavily used printing plates by adding a thin copper coating.

The Illuminated Bible also includes a solid range of supplemental materials, including tables of weights, coins, and measures, lists of names, a concordance, an index, marginal notes, and the Apocrypha. One scholar has called it the model for the huge, heavy American family Bibles of the later nineteenth century.

Harper & Brothers, the Bible’s publisher, was established in 1817 by two New York brothers, James and John Harper, who were soon joined by their younger brothers Joseph Wesley (called Wesley) and Fletcher. James once explained the company name this way: “Either one is the Harper, the rest are the Brothers.” Several years after The Illuminated Bible, the company launched the major American magazines Harper’s Bazaar, Harper’s Weekly, and Harper’s Magazine (originally Harper’s New Monthly). Harper remains an active publishing imprint as part of HarperCollins.

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The Illuminated Bible. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1846. Library of Congress, Bible Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

The Illuminated Bible. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1846. Library of Congress, Bible Collection, Rare Book and Special Collections Division.


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