Acknowledgements

THE history of the production and reception of translations of the Bible into English, especially the Authorized King James Version, is long indebted to too many people for any of them to be acknowledged in this note. We would, on the other hand, especially like to thank David Weston, Principal Assistant Librarian and Deputy Keeper of Special Collections in the Glasgow University Library, for his invaluable assistance with this project by his diligence in making available first editions of English Bibles from the Ewing Collection in the Library. This Collection is a splendid resource for biblical scholarship on English Bibles. Also to be thanked for making available useful books on the subject are John Barclay and Graham Smith.

This book has been an unconscionable time in the preparation and we would like to thank Catherine Clarke for her infinite patience, Susie Casement for her most cheerful co-operation and constant interest in the project, and also Tamsin Shelton and Judith Luna who over time have joined the list of non-contributing editors and their assistants. Without them all this volume would never have seen the light of day.

The genesis of this project for one of the writers was a bus journey from Bendorf to Worms (Rashi's place) in the company of Gabriel Josipovici in the summer of 1991. The lengthy discussion we had on that trip about how such a World's Classics ‘Bible’ might be written and produced gave rise (in some sense) to this particular execution of the project. So this is (for better or for worse) a form of ‘Gabriel's book’, though who should be thanking whom and for what are open questions, and whether thanks are in order at all is for readers to judge.

ROBERT CARROLL

STEPHEN PRICKETT

January 1996