Fables Choisies Mis en Vers par Monsieur de La Fontaine
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Issue Date
1772
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Book, Whole
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Abstract
I consider this one of the best finds of an unusually successful trip to Europe. I had finished at Picard and stopped next door at a shop supposedly dealing rather in technical books. The shopkeeper found this one book containing two volumes. They are in the family of Bodemann #124. This edition has a different frontispiece from that of Bodemann #124.1, published by Prault père in 1746. Here, by contrast with that frontispiece's placement of La Fontaine among animals, we have a cameo bust of La Fontaine by Heubach and Chovin. This Volume II has a good frontispiece of Aesop among the animals; it looks, by the way, like the perfect complement to the frontispiece of Bodemann #124.1. This edition has an illustration for each fable. Among the best of Volume I are Man and His Image (23); FS (38); The Crow and the Eagle (81); CW (85); MSA (93); The Fox and the Goat (103); The Cat and the Old Rat (126); BF (149); The Serpent and the File (206); SW (220); The Stag at the Pool (230); and DS (245). I believe that Chauveau's illustration is one source for GA here (3). I recognize the portrayal here of BC (52). The image for The Lion and the Mosquito (66) has been pasted into the book. On 70, do we have the wrong image repeated from the following fable (72)? Or is this double fable imaged twice, with LM in the background and AD in the front of both images? Text and picture overlap in this printing method on 113. At 161, one illustration serves two fables. At 219, The Lion and the Hunter seems not to be illustrated. There are several styles of illustration in these two volumes, and they are of varying quality. In Volume II, bound here together with Volume I, VII 5 lacks an illustration (12). Page 77's header is Livre Septième in the midst of the eighth book. Among the better illustrations are The Rat and the Elephant (79); The Husband, the Wife, and the Thief (147); The Partridge and the Roosters (182); The Dream of an Inhabitant of Mogul (216); Two Goats (250); The Fox, the Flies, and the Porcupine (274); The Fox, the Wolf, and the Horse (286); and The Matron of Ephesus (337). The illustrations of the second volume are perhaps not as consistently strong as those of the first volume. There is a T of C at the end of Volume II for Books 7-12, even though the second volume contains Books 8-12. The T of C for Books 1-6 is at the beginning of Volume I. The last page has a nihil obstat.
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J. Samuel Cailler
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10223 (Access ID)