First English Bible printed in America: Rare Book of the Week

William Reese Company
Aitken Bible title page
The Aitken Bible, the First English Bible printed in America, is among the offerings in William Reese Company's first printed catalogue issued under its new ownership by New York-based James Cummins Bookseller and London’s Peter Harrington.
One of the most celebrated American Bibles, it is often referred to as 'The Bible of the Revolution' and was the first complete English Bible printed in America. Endorsed by the Continental Congress in 1782, this very good example, in its contemporary binding, has a price tag of $165,000.
Other highlights in the catalogue include:
- one of only four known copies, a translation into Cherokee of President Lincoln’s Proclamation of Pardon and Amnesty printed at Fort Gibson, Cherokee Nation, in 1864 ($125,000)
- Eadweard Muybridge’s 1877 panoramic photograph of San Francisco, with the exceedingly rare key to the image ($67,500)
- The Aboriginal Port Folio by James Otto Lewis, the first major American colour plate book on Native Americans, featuring 80 vivid portraits from treaty expeditions in the Great Lakes region (1825-1827) ($92,500)
- The Thomas W. Streeter copy of Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays by Lewis Evans, featuring the first map of the Ohio Country, produced in 1755 ($300,000)
- an evocative collection of 29 sea songs and shanties from the early American maritime era, including patriotic works inspired by Thomas Paine and George Washington ($15,000)
- a 1799 autograph letter from George Washington to Secretary of War James McHenry, addressing the challenges of raising a provisional army during the Quasi-War with France ($275,000)