Replica Copy of the First Edition of the Book of Mormon with Original 1830 Page Tipped In

6b Translated by Joseph Smith Junior. Modern Reprint of the 1830 First Edition. Page 57/58 from 1 Nephi 7 Tipped In. 

Notes

The first edition of the Book of Mormon was printed in 1830 in Palmyra, New York, by Egbert B. Grandin, a local printer whose shop used a small hand-operated press typical of the period. Grandin agreed to the job when Martin Harris mortgaged his farm to guarantee payment. The text was handwritten by scribes and then set in type largely by John H. Gilbert, Grandin’s typesetter, who also added most of the punctuation since the manuscript had little to none. About 5,000 copies were printed, bound in brown calfskin or sheep leather, and released for sale in March 1830, making the book not only a foundational religious text but also a notable example of early 19th-century American frontier printing.

Loose original pages from an 1830 Book of Mormon usually exist because damaged or incomplete copies were taken apart at some point in their history. Over the 19th and early 20th centuries, bindings often deteriorated, and owners or dealers sometimes removed pages either to salvage what remained or, later on, to sell individual leaves separately, which could bring more money than a poor-condition whole book. In other cases, pages were lost through heavy use, water or fire damage, improper storage, or amateur rebinding attempts. As a result, many surviving first-edition pages today are “orphans” from once-complete volumes rather than pages that were originally printed loose. In this case the loose page 57/58 is tipped in in place of that page in the replica copy. 

Description 

Modern replica with original page tipped in in its rightful place in 1 Nephi 7.