The Bible That Bankrupted Him — Robert Aitken
The sheets are stacked to the rafters. Ten thousand copies of a book that is approximately four by six inches, one thousand four hundred and fifty-two pages, small Caslon type in two columns, the whole run set by hand and pressed through a common press one sheet at a time. Outside on Market Street in Philadelphia, the autumn of 1782, the war is effectively over but not yet signed. The British are still in New York. And a Scottish-born printer in a leather apron is standing in his shop surrounded by the first complete English-language Bible ever printed in America, which his country has praised and for which his country has paid him nothing.
It is 1782.
He does not just print for the Congress. He serves as Printer to the Continental Congress from 1776, printing the Journals and resolutions and official documents of the Revolution, and when the supply of English Bibles from Britain is cut off by the war, he is the man with the press and the relationship and the nerve to try to solve the problem himself.
He does not just petition. On January 21, 1781, he petitions the Continental Congress for its endorsement to print a complete English Bible in America — an act that was technically illegal under British Crown law, which gave a royal monopoly on English Bible printing to the Stationers’ Company in London — and Congress refers it to committee, and the committee sends the text to the two Congressional chaplains for accuracy review, and they approve it.
He does not just print the Bible. He prints ten thousand copies of the first complete English-language Bible in America in 1782, set in Caslon type and bound as a small duodecimo that fits in a soldier’s pocket, endorsed by a resolution of the Continental Congress on September 12, 1782, which recommends it to the inhabitants of the United States and praises his pious and laudable undertaking — and which provides him with no money at all.
He does not just go bankrupt. The Treaty of Paris is signed on September 3, 1783. British ships return to American ports. British publishers — with scale, legal rights, and lower costs — flood the market with cheaper English Bibles, and his warehouse of ten thousand copies, the most expensive Bibles on the American market, becomes a monument to perfect timing that peace has made catastrophic.
His Spark of Liberty was the belief that the new republic needed its own Bible, printed on its own press, at whatever cost to the man who printed it.
Congress praised it. Peace destroyed it. He spent twenty years paying off the debt. His daughter Jane inherited what was left of the business and the obligation, and she went to debtor’s prison for it.
Now, “Where History Comes to Life.”
Born in Dalkeith, Scotland, in 1734, he emigrated to Philadelphia in 1769 and established himself as a printer at Pope’s Head in Market Street. He became Printer to the Continental Congress in 1776. In 1781 he petitioned Congress for endorsement to print a complete English Bible in America — a project that had been impossible under British Crown law. On September 12, 1782, Congress passed a resolution recommending his Bible to the inhabitants of the United States. Congress did not fund, commission, or pay for it. He financed the entire project himself. The Aitken Bible was the first complete English-language Bible printed in America; Christopher Sauer Jr. had printed German-language Bibles in America beginning in 1763, and Isaiah Thomas would print the first folio-format English Bible in America in 1791. All three are distinct claims. Fewer than forty complete copies of the Aitken Bible survive. He died in Philadelphia on July 15, 1802, in debt.
His name was Robert Aitken.
Now We Know Em
by Christopher B. Gordon
The Speedwell’s Confession, Book One of the Sparks of Liberty series, is live on Amazon Kindle and free with Kindle Unlimited.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GZ5QH7L8
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