King James and Queen Victoria

The 400th anniversary of the King James Version has occasioned a slew of books on the impact of this translation and of the Bible more generally, with more still to come before the year is out. It's fitting, then, that 2011 should also mark the publication of Timothy Larsen's A People of One Book: The Bible and the Victorians (Oxford University Press), an exceptionally rich and nuanced account of how "the Bible loomed uniquely large in Victorian culture in fascinating and unexplored ways." In addition to deepening our understanding of the Victorians—and briskly deflating widely held misconceptions left and right—Larsen's chronicle implicitly prompts us to ask questions about the presence of the Bible in our own place and time.