Macklin Bible The Holy Bible, embellished by the most eminent British artists. With historical prefaces…For T. Cadell, by T. Bensley, 1824. Folio (4 vols). Contemporary black hard-grained morocco, boards richly panelled in gilt and blind, spines with low raised bands gilt, compartments scrolled in gilt, lettered directly in gilt in two and at foot with Macklin's name, wide inner dentelles decorated in gilt and blind all round, yellow doublures and endpapers, gilt edges, wide embroidered blue markers; 76 engraved plates, large engraved head- and tail-pieces throughout. First edition thus. A re-issue of the sumptuous Macklin Bible (1800), with the original plates and new prefaces by Edward Nares (1762-1841), Regius Professor of modern history at Oxford. The first three volumes (dated 1824) correspond to Macklin's original six. The last volume of Apocrypha is dated 1816 which is when the supplement was issued to Macklin's original work. Macklin's impressively illustrated Bible, printed in dramatic large type, drew the artistic talents of de Louthenbourg, Hamilton, Opie, Cosway, Benjamin West and Richard Westall, along with Fuseli, Kauffman, Reynolds and Stothard. It almost bankrupted the publisher, who never lived to see its success. He died exhausted (aged 47) just five days after the delivery of the final engraving. It ''endures as the most ambitious edition produced in Britain, often pirated but never rivalled''. (ODNB).