Alexander The Corrector by Julia Keay

Alexander The Corrector

The Tormented Genius Who Unwrote the Bible

by Julia Keay

HarperCollins, 2004 [First Edition], ISBN 000713195x, black and white plates, hardcover, dust-jacket

Fine Condition, minor edge and shelf wear, no inscriptions, remainder line to bottom fore-edge, dust-jackets shows minor edge and shelf wear with small chips and minor scuffing (see photographs)

"Alexander Cruden is remembered  today not so much for his mighty work, Cruden's Concordance to the Bible, as for the widespread belief that he was mad.  His book was  a monumental achievement: at 2.5 million words, it is four times the length of the Bible itself: and in nearly three hundred years it has never been superseded.
Born in Aberdeen in 1699, as a young man Cruden was cast into an asylum for reasons that at the time were considered too shocking to reveal.  The scandal ruined his plans to enter the Church, and he fled to London, where he worked as a private tutor and then as a proof-corrector before becoming Bookseller by Royal Warrant to Queen Caroline (wife of George II.) in 1737, weeks after completing Concordance, he was back in the madhouse, abducted by a jealous rival for the affections of a rich widow and committed to a private asylum.  After three months he managed to escape through a window."