Bede’s 'Ecclesiastical History': First ed. of he second English translation.

Venerable Bede / [John Stevens, trans.]. The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, From the Coming of Julius Caesar Into this Island, in the 60th Year before the Incarnation of Christ, Till the Year of our Lord 731. Written in Latin by Venerable Bede, and now Translated into English from Dr. Smith’s edition. To which is added, The Life of the Author. Also explanatory notes. London: Printed for J. Batley at the Dove in Pater-Noster-Row, and T. Meighan in Drury-Lane, 1723. 8vo [19.4 x 12.0 cm], [22] ff., 479 pp., [5] pp., with woodcut head-pieces, tail-pieces, initials and factotum initials. Bound in contemporary calf, stamped lettering piece laid to spine, blind-tooled ‘Cambridge panel” boards. Some rubbing, abrasion, chipping and edge wear to spine and boards, early annotations to endpapers. Canceled inscription on title, occasional staining and toning, contemporary annotation at p. 287.
 
 
First edition of John Stevens’ English translation (1723) of the Venerable Bede’s Latin Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (c. 731). Stevens’ translation—the second modern English translation following Thomas Stapleton’s of 1565—was based on the new Latin edition (1722) prepared by John Smith. Smith’s Latin edition relied on the ‘Moore Bede’ (Cambridge, University Library, MS Kk. 5. 16), a manuscript written out c. 735.
 
A. M. Sellar neatly summarizes the early translations and editions of Bede: “The earliest [Latin] editions were printed on the Continent; the ‘editio princeps’ is believed to date from 1475. A number of editions followed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the first in England was published by Abraham Whelock at Cambridge in 1643-4. Smith’s edition in 1722 marked a new era in the history of the book. It was the first critical edition, the text being based on the Moore MS. collated with three others, of which two were eighth century MSS … The first translation of the ‘Ecclesiastical History’ is the Anglo-Saxon version, executed either by Alfred himself or under his immediate supervision … The first modern English translation is Thomas Stapleton’s (1565), published at Antwerp … The work was again translated by John Stevens (1723), and a third time (with some omissions) by W. Hurst in 1814. In 1840 Dr. Giles published a new edition of Stevens’s translation with certain alterations; and a second edition of the same volume was published in 1842, and incorporated in the collected works of Bede, edited by Dr. Giles. In 1870 a literal translation by the Rev. L. Gidley was published” (pp. xx-xxi).
 
An inscription on the lower flyleaf reads “Dunson 26th December 1750,” and this, coupled with the fact that the only manuscript annotation in the text occurs at Bede’s discussion of Bishop Colman building two monasteries in Scotland, perhaps suggests an early Scottish provenance.
 
 
*ESTC no. T111716; A. M. Sellar, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England.