Emmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images The Bay Psalm Book is expected to bring more than $15 million at auction.One of eleven surviving copies of the Bay Psalm Book â€" the first book printed in what is now the United States, and one of the world’s most valuable books â€" will be on public view from today until Sunday at Sotheby’s in New York, in advance of a November auction where the book is expected to fetch more than $15 million.
The copy is one of two belonging to Boston’s Old South Church, which sparked fierce controversy in December with the decision to sell the book in order to pay for deferred maintenance to its current building. After the viewing in New York, the book will travel to Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and Dallas before returning to public exhibition in New York in the week leading up to Thanksgiving.
The Bay Psalm Book, printed in an original edition of 1,700 in Cambridge in 1640 by Stephen Daye, was intended as a closer paraphrase of the Hebrew original than the one the Puritans brought from England, and was quickly adopted by nearly every congregation in Massachusetts. No example has appeared at auction since 1947, when it sold for “many multiples†of then-current prices for the Gutenberg Bible and Shakespeare’s First Folio, according to Sotheby’s.
“It is a mythical rarity,†David Redden, the chairman of the auction house’s books department, said in a statement. “Yet here it is today, this modest little book printed in the American wilderness but embodying the values that created our nation: political freedom and religious liberty.â€
The Old South Church, founded in 1669, has an equally illustrious history, including opposing the Salem witch trials, baptizing Benjamin Franklin and holding the meetings that led to the Boston Tea Party.
