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Religious Books, Bibles, Hyms, etc. 0416: Anon., A Curious Hieroglyphick Bible

No digitised images of this text are currently available - but see 0415 for page images of another edition.

In Protestant Britain personal access to the Word of God was deemed vital for religious well-being, as much for children as for adults. Reading the Bible was regarded the surest way to gain salvation for adults. But it seemed obvious to many that children, whose souls needed as much - if not more - tending than those of adults, were not intellectually able to profit from reading the Scriptures. Others disagreed, notably Sarah Trimmer, who dedicated much of Guardian of Education (1802-1806), the ground-breaking Review of children's books, to the contention that there could be no legitimate substitute for the Bible, which must always be presented without the slightest modification. But the Evangelicals in particular sought ways to popularise and simplify the Scriptures, so as to draw children towards Christianity. One strategy they employed was to produce Children's Bibles, which generally used simple language and might concentrate on just a few Scripture episodes (0392 for instance). Another was to convert the Bible into a form deemed more appealing to children. There were abridgements, verse versions, dramatic renderings, and there were heavily illustrated editions. After all, illustrations had long been used to explain and ingratiate scripture in different media, from stained glass to emblem books.

The Hieroglyphick Bibles (0415-0417 and 0429 in the Hockliffe Collection) went even further. They represent the fullest fusion of illustration and text possible. On each page an isolated verse from either the New or Old Testament is set out, with certain key words replaced with images. These are sometimes rather difficult to decipher, so it was probably just as well that full text versions of the passage were printed at the bottom of each page. Some of these hieroglyphs are literal depictions, others are more obscure, and several provide interesting depictions of contemporary life - the schoolmaster on p.108 for example, or the labourer on p.113.

The illustrations were designed, the preface reveals, to give those who supervise children 'an Ascendency or Power over such tender Minds'. They were be used to draw children to the text through their own volition. Teachers were urged not to force children to learn, 'for such Compulsion, or Constraint, is oftener an Obstacle than an Encouragement towards learning the necessary and useful Sciences.' Interestingly, the author evidently envisaged that those who had the guidance of children would be women: 'Mothers, Governesses, and Nurses' (p.i.f.).

Following the first part, providing the hieroglyphic representations of the Bible, came several other short sections. A page-long description and depiction of each of the four Evangelists was followed by a description of Doomsday, complete with a rather Dante-like image of the Last Judgment (p.132). Last, came a section called 'Questions and Answers out of the Holy Scriptures', accompanied by a picture of a boy reading with his father, whilst his brothers play at being soldiers, or with their hoops (p.134). The wood-cut makes clear that the way for a child to win his or her parent's affection is through reading, not play.

The Hieroglyphick Bible was first published by T. Hodgson in 1783. It was evidently an immediate success, with twelve editions within the next ten years, as well as the usual American and Irish pirated versions. Hodgson appears to have died in 1793, for the thirteenth edition of 1794 was 'printed and sold by Robert Bassam: (by assignment from the executors of T. Hodgson)' although the names H. D. Symonds, and Scatcherd and Whitelaw, also appeared on the title-page as joint publishers. Bassam, the son of a coffin-maker, had begun to operate as a printer and publisher in the mid-1780s (Maxted 1977: 15). His miscellaneous list included various satires and broadsides, as well as many other works children. A document entitled 'Facts addressed to the Booksellers and Stationers' which exists only in the John Johnson Collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford confirms that Bassam bought the rights to the Hieroglyphick Bible on 24 December 1793, after Hodgson's death. He paid the substantial sum of £144. When a rival version was brought out under the title The New Hieroglyphick Bible, he was understandably aggrieved. The new version was 'so much an imitation' of his own publication, he complained, 'that an indifferent person would not readily discover any difference between them', and its wood-cuts were directly copied from the original to which he had bought the rights. Although he complained widely, to both the Rev. Rowland Hill, who had written a preface for the rival publication, and to other booksellers, Bassam was unable or unwilling to bring a prosecution (Bassam 1793).

Bassam continued to publish the work throughout the 1790s and into the nineteenth century. He eventually retired in 1808, and his business seems to have passed to E. Bassam, presumably his son. Certainly the 'twentieth' edition of 1812 (0415) bears his imprint, although he still felt it necessary to note that the book was published 'by assignment from the executors of T. Hodgson'. E. Bassam apparently owned a bookshop too, as revealed by an advertisement at the beginning of the volume. The undated edition published by Houlston & Co. edition in the Hockliffe Collection (0429) was probably published sometime in the late 1820s or 1830s, by which time the firm had moved from to London from Shropshire, and the Hieroglyphick Bible was well and truly out of copyright.