Читать книгу Martyrs and Mystics - Ed Glinert - Страница 15

ALEXANDER CRUDEN’S ADDRESS, Camden Passage

The alleyway near Angel tube station, which contains one of the greatest concentration of antique shops in Britain, was home in the early eighteenth century to the biblical expert Alexander Cruden. In 1737 he completed the first English concordance to the Bible, a monumental production, longer than the complete works of Shakespeare. It lists alphabetically every significant word in the Scriptures and indicates where in the Old and New Testaments it can be found.

Cruden was something of an eccentric. He would stride through the streets of Islington removing all traces of the number 45 to show his contempt for the radical orator and pamphleteer John Wilkes, whose issue No. 45 of the North Briton magazine had criticised George III. The king must have been pleased, for in 1758, the year the second edition of the Concordance appeared, he gave Cruden £100.