Printing the Book

Printing the King James Bible was a major assignment—and an expensive one—for the king’s printer, Robert Barker. How did Barker tackle the job? What was it like to work in a printshop in 1611? How were books printed in the early 1600s, and how were errors caught (or missed)?

Steven Galbraith, Andrew W. Mellon curator of books at the Folger Shakespeare Library and co-curator of the Folger Manifold Greatness exhibition, explores these and other questions in Printing the Book, one of several new videos created for this website. This video includes some famous printing errors in early King James Bible editions, including the accidental substitution of Judas for Jesus (in the “Judas Bible”).

Transcript