The first book to be printed in America – a modest little brown book of psalms described as "a mythical rarity" – will be auctioned in November by a Boston church and is expected to fetch up to $30m (£20m).Only 11 of the 1,700 copies printed in 1640 of the Bay Psalm Book are known to survive, and the Old South church in the heart of Boston owns two of them.
The last time a copy came up for sale was in 1947, when it set a world record price for any printed book.
At $151,000, it fetched more than anyone had then paid for rarities such as a Shakespeare first folio – a good copy sold in the same auction season for only $22,000 – a Gutenberg bible or the gigantic, dazzlingly illustrated Audubon's Birds of America.
The psalm book was printed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the congregationalist puritans who wanted a version of the psalms which they believed closer to the Hebrew original than the ones they brought with them from England.
Although an almanac may have been printed earlier, possibly on the same press, the Whole Booke of Psalmes is generally agreed to be the earliest bound true book and – because of the scholarship of members of the community, including John Cotton, Richard Mather and John Eliot – the first book written in America as well.
Funds were raised in England and a printing press, paper and a printer were sent to the new world in 1638. By 1700 Boston had become the second most prolific printing centre of English books, surpassing Oxford and Cambridge, and second only to London.
David Redden, chairman of Sotheby's books department, described it as not just a landmark in printing but in political history: "This little book of 1640 was precursor to Lexington and Concord and, ultimately, to American political independence. With it, New England declared its independence from the Church of England."
Nancy Taylor, senior minister and chief executive of the Old South church, said the money from the sale would allow the church to increase its grants and outreach programmes, and also to keep the historic building open and free to the public seven days a week.
The congregation opposed the infamous witchcraft trials, published the first anti-slavery tract, baptised Benjamin Franklin, and hosted the meetings that led to the Boston Tea Party.
The book is being sent on a touring exhibition across the US before the auction in November at Sotheby's in New York.