The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Testaments. Translated out of the original tongues and with the former translations diligently compared and revised.

1949. Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, 1949. Large folio. Red, goldstamped cloth. Half-title, design title page, dedication, to the Reader. xxii, list of contents. pp. 1-941. With New Testament title page, colophon page. Printed in an edition of 975 copies. A beautiful, uncut copy. With: TARG, WILLIAM. The Making of the Bruce Rogers World Bible. Cleveland and New York, The World Publishing Company, 1949. 4to. Red goldstamped cloth. 18 pp., some plates in black and white and 8 pages with decorations and initials for the World Bible. Of the 1875 copies printed, 500 were for sale. This is number 521.

Work on the Bruce Rogers World Bible lasted over four years. In 1945 The World Publishing Company was engaged in refurbishing the format of its extensive list of Bibles and were forcibly struck anew by something that had only vaguely disturbed them in the past - the lack of a contemporary American folio Bible of noble proportions and in the great Bible tradition and they resolved to remedy this lack. Bruce Rogers, who had already designed the Oxford Lectern Bible was chosen for the project and his choice of type was one of Fred Goudy's lesser-used but most beautiful creations, the face Newstyle. But that had previously been cut only in the 18-point size for hand composition. The great length of the book called for machine composition, and the close fitting required by such work made it necessary for many of the characters to be redesigned. Thus Goudy's Newstyle, slightly modified by Bruce Rogers with Mr. Goudy's permission for the Bruce Rogers World Bible, was re-issued for machine composition and renamed Goudy Bible. In the prospectus to the work Bruce Rogers explains the decorative treatment of the book: "The first edition of the King James Bible in 1611 was lavishly decorated with fairly good woodcuts... The new World Bible, in its turn, will be fittingly decorated, with headings to the sixty-six books, initial letters, and a bordered title page made up from type ornaments or flowers. These, together with the type selected, are intended to give a slightly oriental flavor to the volume, indicative of the Syriac and Hebrew sources of the text on which the King James translators based their classic version." A truly magnificent work.