The Bay Psalm Book was the first book to be printed in North America, twenty years after the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts. Today, only eleven copies are still in existence and fetch as much as fourteen million dollars at auction, making it also the most expensive book in the world.

Originally published in 1640 as The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, the unassuming psalter undertook the translation of Hebrew psalms into English verse for a growing population of New England Puritans unhappy with contemporary translations and in...