Fables de La Fontaine

Abstract

Here is a mysterious book. I have spent some time with it. It sold on eBay with this description: From the 1840s, in the original French, this is a handsome leather bound edition, Fables de La Fontaine, wonderfully illustrated with many full page prints. Bound in black leather with 4 raised bands, gilt titles, marbled boards. 7x5 inches, 448 pages. The book lacks a conventional title page, so we are not precisely sure when and where it was published, but there is an inked inscription from 1842. Solid condition, wonderful prints. The French engravers of this period were the best in the world. I spent a good deal of time scouring Bodemann for a clue and found none. Then I tried my own database and found a direct hit . . . almost. I am grateful that I spent some effort describing that book. This book is inscribed in 1842 or 1843. As mentioned above, it has no tittle-page. That circumstance makes the sleuthing about its origin much more challenging! Almost everything in my description of Tastu's edition of 1842 published by Lehuby matches with this book. What does not match? First, this book finishes on 448 and does not include a table of authors from whom La Fontaine has drawn subjects and an AI. Thus it does not have the other book's total of 456 pages. Secondly, there are several missing illustrations: FWT (163); The Fowler, The Hawk, and the Lark (197); MM (229); The Wolf and the Fox (380). Both of these circumstances can be easily explained through wear and tear -- and removal of good pictures -- over the decades. A third difference is totally surprising. This volume has at 177 an inserted picture page of Le Hérisson et les Lapins. The Hedgehog and the Rabbits is a fable by Florian! The bottom of the page has Liv. V, Fable VIII. Whose Book 5 are we dealing with? Good questions! Let me excerpt some of my comments on that edition as they apply to this copy. Its illustrations display nattily dressed animals in very expressive poses, as the frontispiece of DW immediately shows. WL (46) is strongly dramatic. Other illustrations include FS (57); LM (78); UP (64); The Wolf Become Shepherd (100); FG (111); The Ass and the Little Dog (129); BF (a favorite of mine, 135); FWT (163); The Stag and the Vine (173); The Stag Seeing Himself in the Water (another favorite of mine, 191); The Cobbler and the Banker (251); The Bear and the Lover of Gardens (with a great fly on the nose, 264); The Monkey and the Cat (327); The Fish and the Flute-playing Shepherd (355); and The Wolf, the Fox, and the Horse (429). FG has a monkey lass standing in front of a ladder and holding a basket of grapes in one hand and a bunch in the other, while the fox shows a gesture of aversion. The images are very much in the tradition of Grandville.