£650
8vo, pp. [iv], 676. Near-contemporary tree calf, spine elaborately gilt in compartments, red morocco label, marbled endpapers, edges yellow. Some light toning and spotting. Expertly rebacked (by Bernard Middleton) with old backstrip laid down, hinges relined.
An attractive copy. In 1758 Baskerville proposed the casting of a new set of Greek types to the Oxford University Press, and they ordered 2000 copies of this octavo New Testament (plus 500 in quarto) to be printed with the resulting type - which ended up being its only use. Negative critical reception may have contributed to its abandonment, but Baskerville's Greek face has recently been reassessed by Gerry Leonidas as an important predecessor of more modern types (if perhaps not quite as elegant as that used by the Foulis press) that had fallen afoul of an arbitrary typographic orthodoxy.
