The Holy Bible : Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues [and with a Preface] (by Julia E. Smith)

Hartford, Connecticut: American Publishing Company, 1876. 4to, original brown cloth, gilt title at spine and upper cover, speckled edges. Title leaf, 892 (Old Test.), [1]-276 (New Test.) pp.

The first edition of the first translation of the entire Bible by a woman.

Julia Evelina Smith (1792-1886), a suffragist and abolitionist from Glastonbury, Connecticut, translated the Bible in the 1850s in an overt attempt to aid the cause of women’s rights by demonstrating what a woman might accomplish. However, she did not publish her work for another twenty years.

In her preface, Smith notes: "It may seem presumptuous for an ordinary woman with no particular advantages of education to translate and publish alone, the most wonderful book that has ever appeared in the world, and thought to be the most difficult to translate. I had studied Latin and Greek at school, and began by translating the Greek New Testament, and then the Septuagint. I soon gave my attention to the Hebrew, and studied it thoroughly, and wrote it out word for word, giving no ideas of my own, but endeavoring to put the same English word for the same Hebrew or Greek word, everywhere. It took me about seven years to accomplish the five translations, at least."

In her radical and controversial work, The Woman’s Bible, Elizabeth Cady Stanton noted of Smith’s translation that copies "will be a rarity in the next century and will be much sought after by bibliomaniacs, to say of nothing of scholars who will want it for its real value."

An inscription appears on the flyleaf reading “Presented by the translator to Alice M. Stokes, Southbury, Conn.” Another inscription reads “Charles W. Burpee, Hartford.” (Burpee was an 1883 Yale graduate and edited several Connecticut newspapers). An inscription appears on the title-page as well, reading “By Julia E. Smith, Glastonbury, Conn.”

REFERENCES: Simms, The Bible in America, pp. 149-150; Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman’s Bible, p. 151.

CONDITION: Good, head and foot of spine partially chipped, small chip out of cloth on lower spine, early white ink inscription below spine title reading “by Julia E. Smith...,” toning to title page from inserted papers; tight, generally clean copy.