One Hundred Fables with Illustrations; Hundert Fabeln in Wort und Bild; Cent Fables Illustrées. Neue Ausgabe in drei Sprachen

Abstract

Bodemann #292.1. A very nice volume bound in half leather with marbled covers and endpapers. As Bodemann notes, the illustrations are after Grandville, but more proximately they are reproduced from another version that Wigand did--only in German--in 1837. The fables begin immediately on the page after the title-page. Every fable begins on a right-hand page after an illustration slightly larger than a half-page. The illustrations are well rendered here. The text, which is divided into three columns, regularly continues onto the obverse; Fables 65 and 69 present an exception, since in at least these two cases the fable is completed on the first page and the obverse is thus blank. The right-hand pages are numbered from 1 to 100. There is a crack in the spine at 54. The book ends as abruptly as it starts, with nothing but two blank pages following the obverse of 100. The seller guessed at 1860, but I find nothing to distinguish this book from Bodemann's publication of 1839. This is one of the more notable books in the collection.