First book printed in America auctions at record $14.2M

A copy of the first printed book in America has become the most expensive auctioned book in the world after it sold for $14.2 million.

Agence France-Presse reported The Bay Psalm Book, a translation of biblical psalms by Puritan settlers marking an important publishing milestone, was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1640.

And although its pages are worn and marked with handwriting, it took only minutes to sell at a world record price on Tuesday at a Sotheby's auction. The buyer was American billionaire David Rubenstein, according to AFP, who said he would loan it to libraries around the U.S. for the public to see.

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The book was predicted to sell for between $15 million and $30 million, according to the Associated Press.

The text is one of 11 copies left of the Bay Psalm Book, according to Reuters, and one of the best preserved that exists. The other copies belong to institutions including Yale and Harvard.

The enormous price it fetched beat the last world record for most expensive auctioned book set by John James Audubon's Birds of America in 2010, when it sold for $11.4 million.

The first publication in Canada, according to The History of the Book in Canada, was a copy of the Halifax Gazette newspaper. The Great White North's first printed book is said to be a catechism written in Montagnais by Jean-Baptiste de la Brosse.

Photos of the Canadian text can be seen through the British Library's online Quebec exhibit.

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