“Basketful of Errors” : John Baskett and the Vinegar Bible

John Baskett and the Vinegar Bible was a ‘basketful of errors’

The history of the printed Bible has been marked by many misprints. Poor printers have been fined, struck down by charges of heresy, and even doomed to a life of destitution in a debtor’s prison. One such printer came away from this embarrassing faux pas relatively unscathed, this misprinted edition was remarked upon at the time as a “basketful of errors”.

John Baskett was the King’s Printer who purchased the bible-patent in 1709 which granted him the exclusive right to print the Book of Common Prayer and the King James Bible in the United Kingdom.

In 1716 he began printing at Oxford a large two-volume edition of the Holy Bible. The first volume, the New Testament, was published in 1716 and the second volume, the Old Testament, was printed in 1717. This beautiful edition was soured by a mistake in Luke, chapter 20 where “the parable of the vineyard” was misprinted as “the parable of the vinegar”. Henceforth, this misprinted edition came to be known as the ‘Vinegar Bible’.

The copy of the ‘Vinegar Bible’ held at the John Kinder Theological Library has been cut and rebound in a reversed calfskin binding with metal bosses, inscribed with ‘St Ive Church’ and the date ‘1832’. There is no record of how this bible came to our collections but there is perhaps one possible link.

Edmund Hobhouse, selected by his friend Bishop Selwyn, was consecrated Bishop of Nelson in 1858 by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. His brother, Reginald Hobhouse was the incumbent at St Ive Church in Cornwall. There was an urgent need for Bibles and religious texts in the newly formed Anglican Diocese in the South Pacific. This large edition with its well-known misprint may have been retired from the Cornwall parish and given to Edmund to be used in his new position as Bishop.