Stephen Daye, the first printer of English-speaking North America,
established his press at Cambridge late in 1638 or early in 1639
and printed the famed _Bay Psalm Book_ there in 1640. This volume
of 295 pages is the first substantial book and the earliest extant
example of printing from what is now the United States. Mrs. Adrian
Van Sinderen of Washington, Conn., deposited an original copy of the
_Bay Psalm Book_ in the Library of Congress at a formal ceremony held
in the Librarian's Office on May 2, 1966. Mrs. Van Sinderen retained
ownership of the book during her lifetime; it became the Library's
property upon her death, April 29, 1968.
The book is properly entitled _The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully
Translated into English Metre_. Of 11 extant copies this was the last
in private hands, and it filled the most serious single gap in the
Library's collection of early American printing. It is an imperfect
copy, lacking its title page and 18 leaves. Bound in calfskin, it is
one of the five copies in an original binding.
Zoltán Haraszti's authoritative study _The Enigma of the Bay Psalm
Book_ (Chicago, 1956) includes information about all the surviving
copies. Mrs. Van Sinderen's copy was one of five that were collected
by scholarly Thomas Prince of Boston (1687-1758), who bequeathed his
extensive library to Old South Church. It was from the church that the
Cambridge wool merchant and Bible collector George Livermore obtained
it in 1849. By an exchange agreement between Livermore and the
prominent bookseller Henry Stevens, 12 leaves were removed from the
volume to complete another copy, which Stevens sold to James Lenox in
1855 and which now belongs to the New York Public Library. Livermore's
collection, deposited at Harvard after his death, was auctioned in
1894 in Boston, his _Bay Psalm Book_ realizing $425 and going to Mrs.
Van Sinderen's father, Alfred Tredway White of Brooklyn.
[Illustration: (Richard Mather's _The Summe of Certain Sermons upon
Genes: 15.6_, printed at Cambridge in 1652)]
Before 1966 the earliest Massachusetts imprint, as well as the
earliest imprint of the Nation, in the Library was Richard Mather's
_The Summe of Certain Sermons upon Genes: 15.6_, printed at Cambridge
in 1652. Its author was the progenitor of the powerful Mather family
of New England divines, and he was among the translators contributing
to the _Bay Psalm Book_. Its printer, Samuel Green, operated the first
Massachusetts printing press after Stephen Daye's son Matthew died in
1649, Stephen having retired from the press in 1647. Mather's book
contains his revised notes for sermons preached at Dorchester.
[Illustration: (_Bay Psalm Book_)]
The Library of Congress copy--one of four extant--is inscribed by an
early hand, "James Blake his Booke." In the mid-19th century this
copy apparently came into the possession of Henry Stevens, whereupon
it was bound in full morocco by Francis Bedford at London; and it
presumably belonged to the extensive collection of Mather family books
that Stevens sold in 1866 to George Brinley, of Hartford, Conn.[1] The
Library of Congress obtained the volume with a $90 bid at the first
sale of Brinley's great library of Americana, held at New York in
March 1879.
[Footnote 1: See Wyman W. Parker, _Henry Stevens of Vermont_
(Amsterdam, 1963), p. 267-268.]