Bible -- Commentaries; Bible -- Feminist criticism; Women in the Bible
King James appointed fifty-four men of learning to translate the
Bible. Seven of them died and forty-seven carried the work on. Compare
this corps of workers with one little woman performing the Herculean
task with without one suggestion or word of advice from mortal man!
This Bible is ten by seven inches, and is printed in large, clear
type. There are two styles of binding, cloth and sheepskin. The
cloth binding was $2.50 at the time it was issued and while Julia Smith
lived, and the other was $3.00, but as they are getting scarcer the
price may have gone up. They will be a rarity in the next century and
will be much sought after by bibliomaniacs, to say nothing of scholars
who will want it for its real value. Julia Smith had the plates of her
Bible preserved, but where they are now is more than I know. It was
published by the American Publishing Company, of Hartford, in 1876.
Julia Evelina Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., was one of five sisters of
a somewhat notable family, the father and mother both having strong
traits of character and marked individuality. The mother, Hannah
Hickok, was a fine linguist and mathematician. She once made an almanac
for her own convenience, almanacs being rather scarce in those days.
She could tell the time of night whenever she happened to awake by the
position of the stars. She was an omnivorous reader and a great
student, and in those days before the invention of stoves, her father,
in order to allow her the requisite retirement to gratify her studious
tastes, built her a small glass room. In the days of the Abby and Julia
Smith excitement, when they refused to pay their taxes, some writer was
so wicked as to say that Julia Smith's grandfather shut her mother up
in a glass cage. Seated in this glass enclosure, placed in a south
room, with the sun's rays beating down upon her, as upon a plant in a
conservatory, she could pursue her studies to her heart's content. She
was an only child and adored by her father; and so much did she think
of him that in his last illness, when she was away at school, she rode
four hundred miles on horseback in order to see him before he died.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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