Fables de La Fontaine

Abstract

I thought I had found a duplicate copy of a book listed in our collection under 1971/80, but, as so often, the two books have clear differences. The back cover adds five other books in the same collection and adds "Deux Coqs d'Or," a bar code, and a price of 53 Francs. Everything up front in the book is the same, except for the small print on the verso of the title-page. "© 1980, 1971" at the beginning of this line has changed to "©1971, 1982" and added an ISBN number. At the end, page 140 had faced a blank page except for the small print at the bottom. In this later book, the date of the "depot légal" has changed from 1980 to 1985 and the page itself gives a colorful list of "Série Classiques" of the Collection Contes-Histoires, numbering some nineteen books including the present volume. As I wrote then, there are numerous realistic, playful, better-than-average drawings of animals in courtly human garb. It would be difficult to separate some from the text, since they are so well arranged on the page. The book is organized around specific animals.