Bible Trivia: Thumb Bibles

Thumb Bibles usually have to be read with a magnifying glass. The first Thumb Bible, printed for children and containing illustrations, was printed by John Weever in London in 1601. It was 3.3 by 2.7 cm (1.3 by 1.1 inches) and consisted of 128 pages.  It was abridged and did not contain the full biblical text.  Because of its size, it could only be read with a magnifying glass.

The term "Thumb Bible" was not actually used in reference to these tiny Bibles until 1849 and probably was a reference to General Tom Thumb, a circus little person who visited London in 1844 with the P.T. Barnum Circus.

There are surviving copies of over 300 different editions of the Thumb Bibles dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.