Nearly Jane Austen’s Family Bible
[BIGG-WITHER.]
The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New … London, Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1628.
8vo, pp. [896], woodcut border to title-page, bound with, at the front, The Booke of Common Prayer (London, Norton and Bill, 1628, pp. [104]), and John Speed’s Genealogies ([1626–7?], pp. [40], with 33 full-page woodcut family trees and a double-page woodcut map), and at the rear, The Whole Book of Psalms (London, Company of Stationers, 1628, pp. [10], 91, [3], with woodcut music); title-page of BOCP dusty, else in very good condition, ruled in red throughout; in contemporary brown morocco, covers gilt with double border of fillets and roll tools, enclosing the initials RB (for Richard Bigg, d. 1632?), floral corner pieces, central lozenge, flat spine gilt with the same tools as the borders; edges and spine slightly dry and rubbed, ties wanting, gilt faded; ownership inscriptions and genealogical notes for the Bigg (later Bigg Wither) family to endpapers.
An attractive octavo Bible, with the apocrypha, genealogies (with a map), psalms, and Common Prayer – this was the family Bible of the Bigg (later Bigg-Wither) family, including Harris Bigg-Wither, who was famously, if briefly, engaged to Jane Austen in 1802.
The likely first owner was either Richard Bigg (d. 1632), a warden of the Merchant Taylors who declined the Mastership in 1626, or his more wealthy and successful son, also Richard (1613–1670). Recorded on the rear endpapers are the names of four of the latter’s children, by his second marriage: Richard (1650–77), subsequently marked ‘deceased’, Nathaniel (1658–76) also ‘deceased’, Lovelace (1661–1725), and Henry (?). Lovelace Bigg, whose ownership inscription dated 1682 is at the front, was a barrister who married Dorothy Wither of Manydown, and was succeeded, eventually, by his son Walter Bigg (1701–72), and then grandson Lovelace Bigg (1741–1813). The latter Lovelace inherited the Manydown estate (and the name Wither) in 1781, and among his many children were Catherine and Alethea Bigg, friends of Jane Austen, whose father was rector of nearby Steventon, and Harris Bigg-Wither (1781–1833). Jane was ‘evidently very much at home with the party at Manydown, where she frequently stayed’ (Bigg-Wither, A History of the Wither Family, 1907) and the family is mentioned frequently in her letters from 1796 on. After a local ball in 1799 she lamented that ‘the sudden illness of Mr. Wither’ (i.e. Lovelace Bigg Wither) deprived her of their company – ‘Poor man! … his life is so useful, his character so respectable and worthy …’.
Harris Bigg-Wither, a shy boy with a stammer, became the heir to Manydown after the death of his older brother in 1794. In 1802, now returned from Worcester College, Oxford, where he did not complete a degree, he encountered Jane Austen again, up from Bath on a visit to Alethea and Catherine. On the evening of 2 December Harris, although six years Jane’s junior, made a proposal of marriage, and Jane accepted, perhaps seduced by the possibly of an escape from Bath and proximity to her friends. By the following morning, she had regretted the decision, which she walked back on, leaving immediately for Steventon and then Bath with her sister. Whatever the circumstances for the proposal, acceptance, and rejection, it seems to have left no lasting wounds for either party. Jane and Cassandra continued in touch with the Bigg sisters, and in 1804 Harris married Anne Howe Frith, with whom he had ten children.
From Harris, the family Bible passed to his son Lovelace (1805–1874), grandsons George Howard Bigg-Wither (1832–72) and Arthur Fitzwalter Bigg-Wither (1835–87), and great grandson Lovelace Bigg Wither (1875–1938), all these names recorded here.
Bible: one of five very similar octavo editions in 1628: ESTC S122831; STC 2282; Herbert 413. BOCP: ESTC S125081; STC 16373a; Griffiths 1628:4. Genealogies: ESTC S122830; STC 23039e.6. Psalms: ESTC S122832; STC 2605.