Unfolding the Gospels

Elizabeth Maria Lloyd (1812/13–1869). 
Exercises in the Gospel Narrative of the Life of Our Lord (Chronologically Arranged) in a Series of Questions and Answers. Accompanied by Fifty Illustrations from Designs of the Old Masters. 
London: Sampson Low, 1834. (BRB1021)

Based on a set of illustrated cards first published with an instructional booklet in 1833, this edition of Elizabeth Maria Lloyd’s popular Gospel lessons for children consists of the same booklet with four extensive folding panels bearing the series of engraved illustrations. The fifty tinted engravings by John Zeitter, arranged chronologically according to the Gospel narratives, reproduced earlier compositions by artists such as Peter Paul Rubens and Nicolas Poussin. The connected panels were an improvement over the individual cards in that they prevented the images from being out of sequence or lost.

Interested in biblical archaeology, Lloyd later worked for the Syro-Egyptian Mission in Damascus, where she met Dr. James Bowen Thompson, head of the British Syrian Hospital. They married and settled in Turkey, but she returned to England after his death during an epidemic. In 1860 she founded the British Syrian Mission in Beirut.