The Whole Booke Of Psalmes

The first book printed in English in what was to become the United States of America. The Whole Booke of Psalmes faithfully translated into English metre. Whereunto is prefixed a discourse declaring not only the lawfullnes, but also the necessity of the heavenly Ordinance of singing Scripture Psalmes in the Churches of God. Cambridge, Massachusettes. Stephen Day. Imprinted, 1640.

The Whole Booke of Psalmes was one of the most published and widely read books of early modern England, running to over 800 editions between the 1570s and the early eighteenth century. It offered all of the Psalms paraphrased in verse with appropriate tunes, together with an assortment of other scriptural and non-scriptual hymns, and was rapidly (if unofficially) adopted by the established English Church. Yet, despite the significant impact of the Whole Booke of Psalmes upon English culture and literature, this is the first book-length study of it, and the first sustained critical examination of the texts of which it comprises. By tracing the ways in which historical contingency, religious fervor and the print marketplace together created and were changed by one of the most successful books of English verse ever printed, this study opens a new window through which to view the intellectual and ecclesiastical culture of Tudor England.

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