The present study constitutes the history of a book that epitomizes the history of the book in early modern England. This inquiry investigates the exemplarity of the Book of Martyrs as a collection that embodies a range of practices related to early modern English printing, publication, and reception that is virtually complete. At the very same time, we must recognize that this extraordinary compilation is unlike any other book published in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. John Foxe's vast collection of unforgettable accounts of religious persecution and related documents centers on the experience of hundreds of people who were burnt alive for their religious beliefs during the reign of Mary I (1553–58). Foxe oversaw expansion of his martyrological history from about 55,000 words in its initial Latin installment to a text that ballooned from about 1.8 to 3.8 million words in four vernacular editions overseen by Foxe and his publisher, John Day. Nearly four times the length of the Bible, the monumental fourth edition is the most physically imposing, complicated, and technically demanding English book of its era (see Figure 1). The second edition of Holinshed's Chronicles (1587) may be somewhat longer, but it lacks the complexity of paratext and spectacular woodcut illustration that made Foxe's history the best-illustrated English book of its time. No other early modern English book exceeds it in length.