Das Neue Testament unsers Herren und Heilandes Jesu Christi, nach der Deutschen Uebersetzung D. Martin Luthers...

Germantown, PA: Michael Billmeyer, 1795. Hardcover. 16mo. Original full calf with both metal clasps present and fully functional. 537pp, (5pp). Front and rear flyleaves are fairly modern crude replacements; text block moderately age toned throughout, with mild occasional foxing. A tight and attractive second printing of this noted "New Testament" issue from the press of the well-known Philadelphia printer (1752-1837); the printing office and home in which this was printed still stands today; it was built in 1730, purchased by Billmeyer in 1789 and is supposedly the site from which George Washington directed his Continental Army forces in the Battle of Germantown. When Billmeyer and his father-in-law set up their Lutheran press in the 1780s, they acquired the surviving equipment of the renowned Philadelphia printer Christopher Saur Jr., whose press the British had destroyed in 1777. The two small leather straps on this copy are old but not original, but all the brass clasp parts are present and attractive -- and it still clicks firmly closed. Despite mild wear, an exceptional copy.