Bay Psalm Book – Wikipedia

The Bay Psalm Book (“Psalter of the bay [of Massachusetts]”) is the name with which it is known The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre ; It was the first book printed in British America in Cambridge (Massachusetts) in 1640. It is a salter in which the psalms are translated into the English metric. The translations are not particularly accurate and none remained in use, although some of the intonations on which they were sung they survived ^{[first] [2] [3]} .
However, it must be considered that his production, just 20 years after the arrival of the pilgrims in Plymouth, represented an exceptional company. The book had several editions and was used for over a century. One of the eleven surviving copies of the first edition, was sold at auction in November 2013 for 14 165 000 dollars, a real record for a printed book ^{[4] [5] [6]} .

The first inhabitants of the colony of the Massachusetts bay brought with them several books of Psalms: the Psalter Ainsworth (1612), completed by Henry Ainsworth for the use of the “separatists” Puritans in the Netherlands; The RavenScroft Psalter (1621) and the Psalter Sternhold and Hopkins (1562, of which there were several editions). Evidently, translations were dissatisfied with the Hebrew of these different greetings and they wanted them closer to the original. They took “thirty learned and pii ministers”, including Richard Mather, Thomas Mayhew and John Eliot ^[7] To provide for a new translation ^[8] . The melodies to be sung, for the new translations, were the family of the existing salters.

The first print was Stephen Day’s third (sometimes written Daye ) and consisted of 148 small pages ‘Quarto’ of sheet, of which 12 of preface, “The Psalmes in Meter”, “A warning for readers”, and a long list of corrects entitled “Errors escaped the press”. As with subsequent editions, Day printed the book that was put on sale by the first book of British America, Ezekia Usher, whose shop was located in Cambridge at the time ^[9] . It is estimated that the first edition was made up of 1 700 copies ^[ten] .

The third edition (1651) was widely revised by Henry Dunster and Richard Lyon. The revision was named The Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs of the Vecchio and New Testament , faithfully translated into English metro. This revision was then the basis for all subsequent editions, and was popularly known as the New England Salterio O New England version . The ninth edition (1698), was the first to also contain music, including 13 songs from A Breefe Introduction to the Skill of Musick At John Playford (London, 1654) ^[11] .

Eleven copies of the first edition of the Bay Psalm Book are still existing, but only five are complete. Only one of the copies is located outside the United States. A copy is in possession of each of the following institutions: ^[twelfth]

• Library of Congress
• Yale University
• Harvard University, is thought to have been purchased to replace the copy present at the Harvard library, after its destruction due to a fire in 1764. ^[13]
• Brown University, originally owned by Richard Mather, one of the translators, passed to Thomas Prince (possibly after the dispersion of the books of the Cotton Mather library, Richard’s nephew, in 1728. It was then purchased by John Carter Brown in 1881 and Donata Then to the Brown University Library in 1901. ^[13]
• American Antiquarian Society
• New York Public Library
• Bodleian Library, already owned by Bishop Thomas Tanner, this complete copy was part of the collection left to the Bodlean Library in Oxford after his death in 1735. ^[13] This is the only copy present outside the United States.
• Huntington Library
• Rosenbach Museum & Library, the most recent copy of the most recent discovery, was sold in 1933 to the Rosenbach Company for £ 150 by such a James Weatherup in Belfast. Some signatures indicate that the copy has previously been owned by several people from Belfast and Glasgow. In 1949, it was, for a short time, stolen by a UCLA student as part of an initiation of fraternity. ^[13]
• Old South Church (Boston) (present in Rare Book Collection of the Boston Public Library)
• David Rubenstein (donated to Duke University) (purchased in November 2013; ^[4] already a second copy owned by Old South Church in Boston ^[14] )

A copy of the first edition was sold, in 1947, for $ 151 000. ^[ten] An edition of 1648, described in American Book Prices Current as “Emerson Copy”, it was paid $ 15 000 on May 3, 1983, al New England Book Auctions di South Deerfield, Massachusetts. ^[15] On September 17, 2009, the Swann Galleries acquired a new edition, c. 1669–1682, together with a Edinburgh Bible , for the sum of $ 57 600. ^[16] On November 26, 2013, Sotheby’s won a copy of 1640, owned by the Boston’s Old South Church ; It was sold for the incredible price of $ 14 165 000, ^[5] establishing a new record for the award of a single printed book. ^{[4] [6]}