This neat, compact, enthusiastic biography surveys the life and work of Cornish autodidact and pioneering biblical scholar Samuel Prideaux Tregelles (1813–75). His magnum opus was the Edition of the Greek text of the New Testament (1857–72) – an edition still very much in use and which resulted from decades of painstaking philology and archival visits across Europe. Brought up in a Quaker family in Falmouth, Tregelles's early scholarly inclinations were delayed in their development while serving an apprenticeship at a Glamorgan iron foundry. But during this time he taught himself ancient Hebrew and immersed himself in Welsh culture. Returning to Falmouth to begin teaching, Tregelles experienced a road-to-Damascus moment under the tutelage of Benjamin Newton, an Evangelical Oxford don then in Falmouth, and converted to Evangelicalism. Stunt dedicates a helpful chapter to Tregelles's views on inspiration. His immersion in textual studies in the 1830s led to the belief that a definitive bible text based on collating ancient manuscripts and not relying on the textus receptus was needed. With this realisation began Tregelles's life's work. Ultimately, he was outdone by the superior manuscript discoveries, though not superior textual criticism, of the more publicity-hungry German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–74).

Stunt covers Tregelles's personal and religious life as much as his scholarly activities. Tregelles joined the independently-minded ecumenical congregation the Plymouth Brethren, a group that he never quite uncoupled himself from, despite a series of unbecoming squabbles in the following decades. In 1845 Tregelles and his wife Sarah Anna travelled to Rome – ‘the seat of papal idolatry’ (p. 75) – to study the Codex Vaticanus, the oldest biblical manuscript then known. But the Vatican Library's possessive, obstructionist treatment prevented Tregelles from undertaking his research. He left Rome disappointed, and even more confirmed in his anti-Catholicism. But he was able to view relevant manuscripts in Modena, Venice and Basel and, in following trips, Paris and various German cities. During the latter visits he conversed with the more famous biblical scholars Karl Lachmann in Berlin and his soon-to-be rival Tischendorf in Leipzig. Stunt provides an interesting chapter on how Tregelles and Tischendorf's initial cordial relations over their shared projects descended into published acrimony. The German scholar was as possessive of his discoveries, not least the Codex Sinaiticus, as the Vatican's librarians were of their manuscripts. Other public activities took up Tregelles's attention. Resulting from his links with the Plymouth Brethren, he found himself fighting for the causes of Tuscan and Spanish Protestants against religious persecution. His textual scholarship and distinct attitudes to Scripture also got Tregelles sucked into several heated public controversies in the 1860s, often with the Plymouth Brethren, where his valour trumped his charity. While he did get his Greek edition published, the painstaking demands of Tregelles's work likely ruined his eyesight and contributed to declining health, and his final years were those of dramatically reduced productivity and eventual paralysis.

The life and times is a result of Stunt's long-standing fascination with Tregelles and is built on research in several archives. Transcriptions of six of Tregelles's letters that Stunt made, prior to their disappearance in the 1960s, appear in an appendix. The author apologises for the book's evident enthusiast's flavour: it is a work of Stunt's own self-professedly autodidactic researches. The expert in the field might find the digressions explaining biblical textual criticism unnecessary. The lay reader, by contrast, will appreciate Stunt's clarifications and contextualisations, such as on the intricacies of debates over biblical prophecy. What shines through in this biography is Tregelles's religious calling, the advances made in biblical scholarship by autodidactic amateurs as much as by institutionally-supported professionals such as Tischendorf, the painstaking, eye-watering research involved, and the power games played out over access to biblical manuscripts. Tregelles may have been outdone in manuscript-finding by the better-funded and better-connected Tischendorf, but his piety and achievements are evident, and use of his edition of the New Testament continues amongst biblical scholars to this day. In Stunt, Tregelles has been the beneficiary of a dedicated and balanced biographer. This work should appeal to specialists in the field of nineteenth-century biblical scholarship.