A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible; or Select Passages in The Old and New Testaments, Represented with Emblematical Figures, for The Amusement of Youth: Designed Chiefly to Familiarize Tender Age, in A Pleasing and Diverting Manner, with Early Ideas of The Holy Scriptures. to Which Are Subjoined, a Short Account of The Lives of The Evangelists, and Other Pieces, Illustrated with Cuts - Scanner unknown There is more information about this book at the bottom of the page
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MDCCLXXXIX = 1789 , so this has got to be the oldest book on the site!
I figured that it had to be that old, before I checked the Roman Number, for two reasons.
First the spelling, Hieroglyphick.
Samuel Johnson published the first true modern dictionary, A Dictionary of the English Language, in 15 April 1755. That began the practice of standardizing spelling. Obviously in 1789, there was still a long way to go.
Secondly the printing of the letter S in a sort of F shape. But not in capitals.
This, I think was before typewriters, so the words would have been printed directly.
As a teacher, the idea of using images as visual aids is sound and quite modern.
Really interesting stuff. Thanks one more time, Lyons!
By Frank Randle
I wonder if the publisher found a way to reuse all those hundreds of wood-block engravings after this title went out of print.
By Robb_K
I've seen and read several English-language books from the 18th Century, and am well used to the archaic small "s", which, incidentally, is NOT the same as the small "f". You can see that easily in this very book. It is interesting that the use of that archaic lower case "s" was standard in English, Scots, German (Hochdeutsch), Frisian, Plattdeutsch, and Dutch, at fairly similar times. But also interesting that English, like Deutsch (standard German) still does today, used to capitalise ALL nouns, as opposed to Dutch, which in all the 18th Century books I remember seeing, only capitalised proper nouns, and first words in a sentence, and other "important words", and still today only capitalises the first word in a literary title.
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