God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James BibleHarper Collins, 2009 M10 13 - 336 pages NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK “This scrupulously elegant account of the creation of what four centuries of history has confirmed is the finest English-language work of all time, is entirely true to its subject: Adam Nicolson’s lapidary prose is masterly, his measured account both as readable as the curious demand and as dignified as the story deserves.” — Simon Winchester, author of Krakatoa In God's Secretaries, Adam Nicolson gives a fascinating and dramatic account of the era of the King James Bible and its translation, immersing us in an age whose greatest monument is not a painting or a building but a book. A network of complex currents flowed across Jacobean England. This was the England of Shakespeare, Jonson, and Bacon; the era of the Gunpowder Plot and the worst outbreak of the plague. Jacobean England was both more godly and less godly than the country had ever been, and the entire culture was drawn taut between these polarities. This was the world that created the King James Bible. It is the greatest work of English prose ever written, and it is no coincidence that the translation was made at the moment "Englishness," specifically the English language itself, had come into its first passionate maturity. The English of Jacobean England has a more encompassing idea of its own scope than any form of the language before or since. It drips with potency and sensitivity. The age, with all its conflicts, explains the book. This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more. |
From inside the book
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... English - speaking world's basic text- book . " -Maclean's ( Canada ) " Offers the general reader a dramatic and measured account of how one of the great , enduring , and influential works of English literature came into being ...
... English libraries and archives are the instructions produced at the beginning of the work , a couple of drafts of short sections sketched out in the course of it , some fragments of correspondence between one or two of them and a few ...
... English , Protestant monarch , as head of the Church of England , had taken on wholesale many of the powers which had previously belonged to the pope . The condition of England was defined by those ambiguities . In the years that the ...
... English history have been more hungry for the future , its mercurial possibilities and its hope of richness , than the spring of 1603. At last the old , hesitant , querulous and increasingly unapproachable Queen Elizabeth was dying ...
... English gentle- man , Sir Robert Carey , who at different times had been a com- mander against the Spanish Armada and a court dandy - just the sort of glamorous and rather sexy man to whom James was instinctively drawn - had ridden ...
Contents
1 | |
2 | |
20 | |
He sate among graue learned and reuerend | 42 |
Faire and softly goeth | 62 |
am for the medium in all things xi I | 84 |
20 | 85 |
The danger never dreamt of that is the danger | 105 |
The grace of the fashion of | 198 |
Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut vp his tender mercies? | 216 |
APPENDICES | 228 |
A The Sixteenthcentury Bible | 247 |
Chronology | 261 |
62 | 274 |
105 | 276 |
ལུ༠ཚŞརྗེནི ཝིཛྫིཥྞཾ 117 137 147 | 277 |
O lett me bosome thee lett me preserve thee next to my heart | 117 |
We have twice and thrice so much scope for oure earthlie peregrination | 137 |
When we do luxuriate and grow riotous in the gallantnesse of this world | 147 |
True Religion is in no way a gargalisme only | 173 |
173 | 278 |
216 | 280 |