Robert Funk Collection of Rare Early English Bibles Heads to Heritage Auction

A collection of more than 70 early Bibles and devotional works tracing more than a century of religious, political and printing history is heading to auction at Heritage. The Robert Funk Collection of Early English Bibles will be offered October 14 as part of Heritage Auctions’ Rare Books Signature Auction. The collection stretches from the English Reformation through the Restoration and brings together major editions associated with William Tyndale, Miles Coverdale, John Rogers’ “Matthew’s Bible,” the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible and the King James, or Authorized, Version.

Heritage Auctions says the collection provides an unusually concentrated look at how the English Bible developed during a period when translation and printing were closely tied to questions of religion and political authority. The books span Henry VIII’s break with Rome, the Protestant reforms under Edward VI, the restoration of Catholicism under Mary I, the return of Protestant rule under Elizabeth I and the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Along the way, the collection also documents changes in typography, book production and the way ordinary readers interacted with Scripture.

Some of the most notable books in the collection are connected to William Tyndale, whose English New Testament first appeared in exile in 1526 and became a foundation for later English translations. The Funk Collection includes three significant Tyndale editions, led by a rare 1549 folio printed by John Day and William Seres. That volume is bound in gilt-decorated 18th-century vellum, while its Book of Revelation contains 20 small woodcuts accompanied by rhyming couplets. Heritage says its specialists have traced only two other copies offered at public auction.

A second 1549 Tyndale folio, printed in London by Thomas Raynalde and William Hyll, includes an inserted leaf inscribed by noted bibliographer Francis Fry, whose 1878 study helped establish the sequence of Tyndale New Testament editions by locating and comparing surviving copies. The collection also contains the first quarto edition of Tyndale’s New Testament, printed and revised by Richard Jugge in 1552. Its title page features a portrait of Edward VI, and Heritage describes it as generally regarded as the last English New Testament printed in England before Mary I came to the throne in 1553 and Protestant biblical texts faced suppression.

Another major rarity is a first edition of Richard Taverner’s Bible from 1539. Although Taverner’s translation did not have the same long-term influence as Tyndale’s, Heritage notes that it introduced or helped establish terms including “parable” and “Passover.” The auction house says it has identified only five other copies at auction, all less complete than the example in the Funk Collection.

The collection also includes an edition of the Great Bible, the first authorized English Bible printed in England and approved for official church use following Henry VIII’s break with Rome. The Funk example was published in 1549 during the reign of Edward VI and contains numerous woodcut illustrations, including depictions of the Sacrifice of Isaac and Jacob’s Ladder, along with decorative title-page borders featuring scenes from the lives of Mary, Christ and the Prophets.

The Geneva Bible is particularly well represented, with 16 examples in the collection. First published in Geneva in 1560 by English Protestant exiles, the edition was designed for close study and incorporated features including verse divisions, maps, tables, summaries and extensive marginal notes. Among the Funk examples is a rare copy of the first folio edition printed in England in 1576.

One of the collection’s most historically important Scottish books is the 1579 Geneva Bible printed in Edinburgh by Alexander Arbuthnot and Thomas Bassandyne. Often called the Bassandyne Bible, it was the first Bible printed in Scotland and followed efforts by Scotland’s General Assembly and Parliament to place vernacular Bibles in churches and certain households. Heritage says the edition holds an important place in the histories of Scottish printing, religion and literacy.

The Scottish portion continues with the first folio edition of the King James Bible printed in Scotland. Robert Young produced the edition in Edinburgh in 1633 after becoming the king’s printer in Scotland, in connection with Charles I’s Scottish coronation that year.

Some of the later books stand out as much for their bindings as for their texts. Two volumes are bound in the style associated with the Queen’s Binders, a largely anonymous group of late-17th-century craftsmen connected with aristocratic and royal patrons. A Cambridge Bible printed by John Field in 1666 and an Oxford Bible printed by Thomas Guy in 1681 feature colorful floral leather onlays, intricate gilt tooling and strapwork, reflecting the increasingly elaborate bookbinding of the Restoration period.

“The collection is remarkable not simply for the rarity of individual editions, but for the intellectual coherence of the whole,” says Heritage Senior Vice President Roberta Kramer. “Funk understood these Bibles as physical witnesses to changing ideas about faith, language, sovereignty, readership and the book itself. It is a privilege to present them on behalf of his estate.”

The Robert Funk Collection of Early English Bibles will be offered October 14, 2026, as part of Heritage Auctions’ Rare Books Signature Auction, with bidding already open.