Krapp, George Philip. “Bible and Prayer Book.” In The Rise of English Literary Prose, pp. 218-70. New York: Oxford University Press, 1915.

In the following excerpt, Krapp identifies the principal English translations of the Bible as crucial factors in the formation of modern English prose.

I

Most Englishmen were doubtless aware of the existence of such a book as the Bible before Wiclif's English version was made, but very few could have known any practical use of it. As an English book, the history of the Bible begins with the third quarter of the fourteenth century. But even this beginning was abortive, and not until Tindale published his New Testament in the first quarter of the sixteenth century did the Bible speak the language which ever since has been familiar to all whose native tongue was English. The Bible is the oldest and has always been the most widely...