rinting the King James Bible

When the King James Bible was ready to be printed, a handwritten copy was given to the king’s printer, Robert Barker. His shop was in London, the printing capital of England. In 1611, Robert Barker and his assistants printed the King James Bible. It probably took them a year to make about a thousand copies, although nobody knows the exact number of copies for sure.

If you bought a book in the early 1600s, you would probably buy only the pages! You would then take the pages to a bookbinder to have them placed in a binding, or cover.

Books with pictures in them usually cost almost twice as much as books with no pictures. Can you think of why?

A very large edition of the King James Bible is called a folio.

A version of the King James Bible written in shorthand—a special writing method with shortened forms of words—was small enough to fit in your pocket.

Most of the 1611 King James Bible is printed in black, but some pages, like the calendar, used red ink, too! Special days, printed in red, were called “red-letter days.”