Scholarly fascination with the many translations of the Bible into English printed in the early modern period long diverted attention away from the many and varied forms of paratextual material which surrounded them. Recent studies, like Ezra Horbury's and Kirsten Macfarlane's, have helped reveal the enormous potential that biblical paratexts possess for helping us to understand the priorities of reformers and the processes of reformation. As the field of paratextual studies continues to grow, Shuger's monograph serves to reaffirm the vibrancy of the subject and charts the development of new forms of biblical paratext within early modern England.
This study takes as its surprising premise Aaron Pratt's contention that Bible readers often selected their copies based on factors like paratextual provision and that, reciprocally, translation was often of secondary importance. Prefaces, prologues, dedications, annotations and indices, as well as prayers, calendars, chronologies, tables and woodcuts, all form part of this impressively wide-ranging exploration. Significantly, rather than attempting to rigidly compartmentalise these types of paratext, Shuger gives careful attention to how these many forms interacted. Throughout the study, time is also productively spent asking what the sources were for these biblical paratexts and Shuger is thus able to show the startlingly different pools of knowledge drawn upon in the processes of their creation which ranged from fourth-century Greek patristics to ninth-century Jewish chronicles.
Shuger's analysis begins in 1525 with Tyndale's New Testament and ends in 1611, a famously lauded year in English bible history. Whilst acknowledging the shock her decision may cause for the reader, Shuger does not treat the King James Bible in this study. It is, in many ways, refreshing to see the King James Bible forced to make way for its biblical forebears over which it so often casts a shadow. The reasons for this omission are centred on its comparative lack of paratextual material and what Shuger views as its ‘soporific and irritating’ prefaces (p. 2). However, in removing the King James Bible from the story, the opportunities to reflect on precisely why the early seventeenth century witnessed a comparative demise of biblical paratexts are thwarted and this is something scholars will no doubt wish to pursue further. Yet, Shuger's sensitivity to the ways in which pieces of paratextual material were recycled across different editions of the English Bible within the period, and the ways in which editions of the same translation of the Bible varied enormously, ensures that the work's chronological scope represents a meaningful framework and not an arbitrary division of bible history.
Chapters i to iii move us through the Bibles of the early Tudor period and towards those printed in the first years of Elizabeth i's reign. Chapter i surveys the many translations printed between 1525 and 1539 and places focus on what Shuger terms theological paratexts. Welcome attention is given to the Matthew, Taverner and Becke Bibles which are too often neglected in favour of the better-known Tyndale and Coverdale editions and the publication of the Great Bible in 1539. Chapter ii focuses on the ‘humanistic’ paratexts of these Bibles and, although the division between theological and humanist paratexts is perhaps not always as evident as Shuger contends, this framing does allow Shuger to clearly draw out the multiple functions that paratexts served. The chapter concludes by exploring how Tudor paratexts help further to reveal how inter- and intra-confessional debates stimulated rather than stifled biblical scholarship. Chapter iii, the heftiest, considers the first editions of the many different translations printed in Elizabethan England while chapter iv focuses on the printing of biblical chronologies and genealogies within them. Chapter v unravels the role played by printers in determining the physical form of Bibles and this ensures that Shuger's work serves as an important reminder that different editions of the same bible translation were printed in strikingly different forms.
Throughout this exploration, Shuger contends that we should see the paratextual material within the various iterations of the Geneva translation, the Bishops’ translation of 1568, and the translation into English authorised by the Catholic Church, as manifestations of the competing visions for the Church that were laid out in the period. Shuger's contention that many of the biblical paratexts surveyed, particularly bible prefaces, functioned as crystal-clear formulations of particular theological and ecclesiological positions within the Church of England also develops into a wider attempt to espy the development of ‘Anglicanism’ through such material. A lengthy discussion of this term within the general introduction acknowledges its many limitations and, whilst it raises some interesting questions about its use, this discussion largely serves to put across the case for the prosecution more strongly than the defence. The strength of this work is its careful analysis of the provenance and printing of bible paratextual material but the attempt to weave this analysis into a wider story of ‘Anglicanism’ reads as a curious detour which ultimately claims space in which more of Shuger's forensic analysis of paratextual material could have appeared.
This work surveys an admirably vast and varied selection of paratextual material and provides its reader with an engaging journey through English Bibles of the period. The magnitude of paratextual material generated throughout the sixteenth century necessitates some omissions and future studies will want to return to them and think further about how readers engaged with the paratextual material that littered the pages of their Bibles. Shuger's study will allow them to do that, and it brings together what has hitherto been a patchwork series of studies exploring isolated Bible paratexts into a broader examination of how they developed across the Reformation period. Scholars and students of the English Reformation, as well as those interested in the broader history of the Bible, history of the book and the development of printing in England, will all find much of interest in this well-illustrated survey. Shuger's work caps a distinguished career and it generously lays out a series of avenues for future research which will surely be gratefully followed.
