Bible in English [Matthew's Version]

5 parts in one volume, folio (11 5/8 x 7 1/2 in.; 295 x 191 mm). Text in black letter, general title printed in red and black within border composed of 14 woodblocks, divisional titles for Parts 2–3 and New Testament printed in black within borders composed of 6 blocks (4 pictorial, 2 side-blocks decorated with fountains and putti), 51 woodcut text illustrations including 2 half-page cuts, woodcut initials; quire AA and leaf U8 supplied in facsimile, lacking blank leaf Aaa8, marginal tear on AA1 (Part 3 title-page) just touching border and half-page woodcut on verso, text block cracked between quires DD and EE, scattered staining. Nineteenth-century cloth, calf spine; worn.  

STC 2077; ESTC S106943; Herbert 74

A reprint of Matthew's Bible of 1537, with revised notes and Tyndale's prologues (including the long prologues to Jonah and Romans and that to the New Testament), edited by Edmund Becke. While it perpetuates the use of "bugges" in Psalms 91:5 from the Coverdale Bible of 1535, it is sometimes also singled out for its abhorrent epithet as the "Wife Beater's Bible," from a note following 1 Peter 3: "And if she be not obedient and healpfull unto hym, endevoureth to beate the feare of God into her heade, that therby she maye be compelled to learne her duitie and do it."