The Holy Bible, : conteyning the Old Testament, and the New: newly translated out of the originall tongues: & with the former translations diligently compared and reuised, by His Maiesties speciall com[m]andement. Appointed to be read in churches. by Bible King James - 1611: Arguably the most important book ever published in English. KNOWN AS THE GREAT "HE" BIBLE, with the reading in Ruth III:15: “he [referring to Boaz] measured sixe measures of barley and laide it on her; and he went into the citie.” The second prono

A-C⁶ D²; (O.T. and Apocrypha) A-Ccccc⁶; (N.T.) A-Aa⁶unpaginated or foliated. The General title mounted and with c. 18 small holes, mostly from old attempts to ink out a prior ownership inscription; the next several leaves have rust-like marks resulting from the damage to the title just mentioned; A2 has a closed tear; the double page map is a facsimile; the blank outer corner is torn from B1 (Mt 10) & there is a closed tear to B2; a strip is torn from the blank outer margin of X6 (Hebrews 12/3); a small piece is torn from the top of Aa5, removing most of a word of text and a word of the headline, recto & verso; Aa6 (the final leaf) was missing and is replaced in facsimile; the final leaves of the NT are increasingly worn and lack the crisp, clean nature of the bulk of the text. Generally the text is crisp and clean, BUT at both front and rear the top margin is shaved, especially in Exodus & Numbers & to the beginning of Deuteronomy (and again at the end of the NT) touching the rule and occasionally the top of the headlines (elsewhere the top margins are small); there is a dampstain at the top from mid-I Kings, retreating to the inner corner in the Prophets, but persisting there to the Gospels: there is a bit more general staining at the end of the NT; the bottom outer corner is a bit creased and dog-eared pretty much throughout, evidencing the use such a Bible received in its early days as a lectern Bible; the outer edge of the leaves is slightly abraded at a few points.

Called "the only literary masterpiece ever to have been produced by a committee," the King James Bible was the work of nearly 50 translators, organized in 6 groups. G.M. "The editors who passed the book through the press were Miles Smith ... and Thomas Bilson ...", see Herbert.

Trevelyan stated "for every Englishman who had read Sidney or Spenser, or had seen Shakespeare acted at the Globe, there were hundreds who had read or heard the Bible with close attention as the words of God. The effect of the continual domestic study of the book upon the national character, imagination and intelligence for nearly three centuries to come, was greater than that of any literary movement in our annals, or any religious movement since the coming of St. Augustine." Thomas Babington Macaulay described it as "a book, which if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power."