james weatherups great find
of Thomas concerning the size of the book. From a comparison of Weatherup’s identification points with the contents of the dozen or so potential reference sources in both Britain and America it is apparent that Cotton’s Editions of the Bible (second edition, Oxford, 1852) was the book that James Weatherup used to confirm the identity of the mysterious book of Psalms he had just purchased. The information he provided in the list above was su Y ciently explicit to identify the work, in particular Weatherup’s recording the ‘Errata’ details as an identifier which was previously only mentioned in Cotton’s 1852 Editions of the Bible . It is a sobering thought to reflect that the eleventh copy of the Bay Psalm Book was only discovered as a result of Henry Cotton going to the expense of personally purchasing a copy of Thomas 1810 History of Printing in America because none was available to him, thus enabling his identification of the Bodleian copy of the Bay Psalm Book . James Weatherup managed to gain access to a copy of Cotton’s 1852 Editions of the Bible which documented the Bodleian copy and confirmed the importance of the incomplete copy of the Psalms in his possession as the earliest surviving book printed in Colonial America. The Weatherup Sale Correspondence We do not know the exact date when James Weatherup became the owner of a copy of the Bay Psalm Book in early 1933, but very shortly after purchasing it he decided to sell the volume to the legendary American bookseller A. S. W. Rosenbach. James Weatherup knew of Rosenbach’s visit to Ulster in 1928 – his draft sale confirmation to Dr. Rosenbach mentions that he was aware of of Rosenbach’s purchase of the Percy Shakespeare First Folio and Quartos at Caledon. The lack of evidence in Weatherup’s Bay Psalm Book notes indicate that James did not con- sider approaching London booksellers as potential purchasers of the book and indeed the tone and content of the letters below all attest to his delight at dealing only with ‘the world’s greatest bookseller’. This course of action may have been considerably assisted by the coincidence that James’ daughter Peggy, who at this time was living in the United States, was about to pay him a visit back at the family
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