Les fables de la Fontaine
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Issue Date
1992
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Abstract
Last night I catalogued a large French book of La Fontaine's fables and opined that it may have had an Italian source. This morning I happened to be looking over a big box of uncatalogued books and noticed a large La Fontaine book. Bingo! It is a year earlier, interiorly exactly the same, and done in Italy! The differences I notice are these: the 1992 year of publication instead of 1993; thinner and shinier paper; a canvas binding; a cover illustration featuring various animals in and near a pond; and a different publisher, Editrice La Lucciola instead of L'Etoile. The back cover again lists the fables, but now they are more appropriately labeled Fables Choisies. The cover illustration is again signed Eleonore or Eleonora in 1992. The verso of the first page and the back cover both refer this time to County Studio. Let me repeat some comments from there. Here is a very large-format book (almost 9½ x 12) with connections to several European countries. There is an AI at the back covering the book's 150 pages. The same design of snail and flowers recurs frequently at the bottom of text pages. The animals are regularly dressed. WC exhibits a typical illustration on 35. TMCM on 103 shows a big black boot ready to come through the door and interrupt the two rats, both of whom are holding hunks of cheese. For large portions of the book there seems to be a rhythm at work: a fable text on a left-hand page is balanced by a full-page illustration on the right-hand page. Then there are two pages with only texts and the repeated bottom decoration. Then the rhythm starts over.
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Publisher
Editrice La Lucciola: Picciola