David Norton

The King James Bible was the result of an extraordinary effort over nearly a century to make many good English translations and turn them into what the translators called 'one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against'. Meer

Early-eighteenth-century literary critics thought the King James Bible had 'all the disadvantages of an old prose translation'. But from the 1760s on criticism became increasingly favourable. Meer

It is regarded as a truism that the King James Bible is one of the finest pieces of English prose. Yet few people are aware that the King James Bible was generally scorned or ignored as English writing for a century and a half after its publication. Meer

David Norton re-edited the King James Bible for Cambridge, and this 2005 book arose from his intensive work on that project. Here he shows how the text of the most important Bible in the English language was made, and how, for better and for worse, it changed in the hands of printers and editors until, in 1769, it became the text we know today. Meer