Alan Cadwallader examines how the revision of the Authorised Version (that ran from 1870 until its published release in 1881) generated one of the most bitter instances of the political interests involved in the translation of a sacred book. Cadwallader shows how a public avowal of unity and fraternal harmony that characterized the public release and marketing of the New Testament revision in 1881 and the Old Testament revision in 1885 masks a tense historical reality that has not previously been reconstructed.

Through a thorough sifting of private correspondence, notebooks kept by some of the members of the New Testament Revision Company in England and the United States, and other not previously studied primary sources Cadwallader examines and presents the political situation that surrounded the translation. He exposes relations between an imperial, sovereign nation and the position of an Established Church; the aspirations and authenticity of denominations within a nation; the competitive tensions of national and international prestige and responsibility; and the ultimate control exercised by publishing houses that fundamentally flawed the process of revision and the public acceptance of the final product.