Fables de La Fontaine
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Authors
LaFontaine
Issue Date
1921
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Abstract
We have five copies of this book in one format or another but only one formatted this way. That is, it has a variegated tan frame around a lively picture of La Fontaine seated with crossed legs and a child on each side. There is not a golden stripe across the top of the cover, as in three copies. What distinguishes this copy from the similar copy consists in what one finds on the last page. Where that copy, which is in better condition, has "Imp. E. Desfossés," this copy, with its disintegrating spine, has "Imp. Maillet, 3 rue de Châtillon, 4780 (9-27)." I take that shorthand to indicate a printing date of 1927. I presume that the other is the undated first edition, perhaps from 1921. As I wrote about it, Bodemann describes the book very well (#409) and lists it as "ca. 1921." I found no date indicated in this book, but I had no doubt that it was the first edition of a book I have loved for a long time, first through Whitman's "Fontaine's Fables" (1934) and then through Hachette's reprint in 1992. See my comments there. See also a 1929 reprinting once owned by the Newark Free Public Library. The illustrations in this 1921 edition are slightly larger than in the 1992 edition. They have a dull finish that seems to me better than the 1992 edition's glossy finish. Some of the best illustrations in a book full of beautiful work: the anthill with its beautiful colors (6), the ant at work in a scene that is used recently for the cover of a French pocketbook La Fontaine (10), the face of the cheese-mouthing crow in a rich variety of hues (14), and several title-pages, including TMCM (25), WL (37), and "The Heron" (61).
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Publisher
Hachette