Forshall and Madden’s 1850 edition of Wycliffe’s Bible has long been out of print. It is very scarce and those rare copies that are available from antiquarian booksellers tend to vary both in condition and in cost. This facsimile edition contains the entire text in a sturdy binding and will be suitable for students of Middle English as well as those interested in the history of the English bible.
The two translations given below are conventionally designated “Wycliffe’s Bible” or “the Wycliffite Bible” because John Wycliffe (c. 1328–31 December 1384) was inspired to render Jerome’s Latin Vulgate into the spoken language of the English people, that they might be better able to understand the scriptures. Today we know that Nicholas of Hereford (died c. 1420) worked extensively on the translation of the Old Testament, completing it by 1382. John Purvey (c. 1354–16 May 1414) was probably responsible for revising the “early” translation (produced during Wycliffe’s lifetime) to the more idiomatic “later” translation, which exhibits less influence from Latin syntax. It is also possible that Cornishman John Trevisa (1342–1402) participated in the earlier translation; indeed the preface to the 1611 King James Bible mentions that Trevisa, a contemporary of Wycliffe, was involved in translating the Gospels into English.
Josiah Forshall (29 March 1795–18 December 1863) and Frederic Madden (16 February 1801–8 March 1873) worked for twenty-two years on their remarkable edition. The early translation is given in the left-hand column, and the later translation in the right. In their text they retained the letter yogh (
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