1400-1799

1400 - 1549

1461/1972 Der Edelstein. Ulrich Boner. Boxed set; #429 of 950. Hardbound. Original: Bamberg: Albrecht Pfister; Reproduction: Stuttgart: Verlag Müller und Schindler/Buchdruckerei Holzer. €400 from Kunstantiquariat Joachim Lührs auf der Fleetinsel, Hamburg, Germany, April, '09.

This book was my bible for a month in the summer of 2009 as I prepared a paper for the Renard Society on Boner's Der Edelstein. Actually, I had scanned the facsimile into my computer before I left. Then in Mannheim I worked through about three fables and their illustrations per day. This is a beautifully made book! The original was published by Albrecht Pfister in Bamberg. Maybe the best testimony I can give to the quality of these reproductions is that I made my own set from the scans of this facsimile but also ordered a set from the library that has the world's only known copy of this book, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel. The scans of the reproductions were better than the pictures of the original! This is the first illustrated book ever printed, and it may be the first book ever published in German. For me the great quality of this book is its illustrations and especially their coloring. Exquisitely done! Commentators note that the woodcut maker is not particularly adept at animals; it is often hard to decipher from a woodcut which animal is being pictured. But his humans are excellent! They are often pictured from the back. The colorist's great gift is shading within a specific color. As I mentioned in my Renard paper given in Utrecht, this is an unusual book: it has no title-page, no page numbers, no sentence punctuation, no end stops for its poetry, and no titles for its fables. The woodcuts serve as the great markers. There is a raised dot for the end of each line of verse and -- when the rubricator remembers - a line through the first letter of the new line following. There is a companion volume, which I will list separately. Together the two books make up a boxed set. See Bodemann #1.1. There is a second, distinct edition a few years later with new woodcuts, and there is also only one copy of that edition, in Berlin.

1476/1972 Aesop's Fables Coloring Book. Ulm illustrations of 1476, along with "new retellings...based closely on old Greek texts." NY: Dover. $1.50.

Valuable because of the nicely enlarged and clear Ulm drawings.

1476/1992 Aesopus: Vita et Fabulae Ulm 1476 (Faksimile). Heinrich Steinhöwel. #128 of 800; boxed, with commentary booklet. Hardbound. Ludwigsburg: Edition Libri Illustri Verlag. Sw Fr 1680 from Erasmus Haus, Basel, Sept., '05.

I never thought we would have a copy of this wonderful book in the collection. From the time I first saw subscriptions being invited, I feared it would always be beyond our means. Prayers do get answered! This is a beautiful facsimile. The hand-colored illustrations from the copy in the Otto Schäfer collection are lovely. Many of them seem like old friends from the many times I have seen them reproduced in various forms. Looking through this tome helps me understand now some of the features of the accompanying Kommentar. The famous title-page, for example, is missing in the Schäfer copy and so is reprinted there in black-and-white from another copy. Other pages illustrated there seem to be the missing pages from this copy. The facsimile offers everything, including bruises and marks. A few of these occur in the lovely illustrations. I note one poorly printed colored illustration: it occurs two pages after the illustration of a man watching his own excrement; it is, I believe, a presentation of Aesop's resolution of the challenge to drink the sea dry. I found an extra copy of one page from the "Extravagantes." Its verso begins and pictures Fable IX, "The Fox, Wolf, and Lion." I will leave it loose at the back of this edition. This big book is a treasure I will keep coming back to!

1476/1980? Aesop's Fables Coloring Book. Ulm. Paperbound. NY: Dover. $1.25 from The Great Northwest Bookstore, Portland, August., '84.

Here is the second generation of Dover's lovely coloring book. The price has gone up from $1.50 to $2.50. It will go up at least twice more in my history of collecting it, though I found this copy for half-price. As I mentioned about the original publication, the book is valuable because of the nicely enlarged and clear Ulm drawings. Dover has changed the bottom of the back-cover to include the book's ISBN number.

1476/1985? Aesop's Fables Coloring Book. Ulm. Paperbound. NY: Dover. $2.75 from an unknown source, August., '87.

Here is the third generation of Dover's lovely coloring book. The price has gone up from $1.50 to $2.50 to $2.75. It will go up at least once more in my history of collecting it. As I mentioned about the original publication, the book is valuable because of the nicely enlarged and clear Ulm drawings. The format seems unchanged from that in the second generation.

1476/1995? Aesop's Fables Coloring Book. Ulm. Paperbound. NY: Dover. $2.75 from an unknown source, August., '95.

Here is an unusual member of the fourth generation of Dover's lovely coloring book. The price has, as in the case of other books in this fourth generation, gone up from $1.50 to $2.50 to $2.75 to 2.95. The difference is that the verso of the title-page does not add Canadian or UK publishers, even though it notes the inclusion of the work in Dover's Pictorial Archive Series. As I mentioned about the original publication, the book is valuable because of the nicely enlarged and clear Ulm drawings. The format finds a bar code added on the bottom right-hand of the back cover with the ISBN printed in relation to it. I presume that this book was published before the others in the fourth generation.

1476/1995?    Aesop's Fables Coloring Book.  Ulm.  Paperbound.  NY: Dover Pictorial Archive Series:  Dover.  $2.95 from an unknown source, August., '95.

Here is the fourth generation of Dover's lovely coloring book.  The price has gone up from $1.50 to $2.50 to $2.75 to 2.95.  As I mentioned about the original publication, the book is valuable because of the nicely enlarged and clear Ulm drawings.  The format finds a bar code added on the bottom right-hand of the back cover with the ISBN printed in relation to it.  The verso of the title-page also adds Canadian and UK publishers and notes the inclusion of the work in Dover's Pictorial Archive Series.

1483/1972 Aesop: Subtyll Historyes and Fables of Esope. Westminster 1483. Caxton's edition and illustrations in facsimile (apparently, but nowhere acknowledged). #439 of The English Experience: Its Record in Early Printed Books Published in Facsimile. Printed in the Netherlands. NY: Da Capo Press, Plenum Publishing Corporation. $65 from the publisher, 1989.

The reproductions are not at all as good as in the Scolar Press edition. The lack of a title page and of more bibliographical information is surprising in so lovely a book.

1484/1976 The History and Fables of Aesop. Translated and Printed by William Caxton, 1484. Reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, with an introduction by Edward Hodnett. #79 of 500 copies. London: The Scolar Press. $62.50 at Marshall Fields Rare Book Room, Nov., '86.

A wonderfully reproduced book. The text can use the help of Jacobs' later reprinting. The 186 woodcuts (many for the life of "Esope") have their own charm but are distinctly inferior to the Ulm woodcuts from which they ultimately are derived. The introduction gives an excellent account of the derivation of early printed Aesop illustrations.

1484/1984 Aesop's Fables in William Caxton's Original Illustrated Edition. Edited by Bamber and Christina Gascoigne. Dust jacket. Printed in Belgium. For sale in U.K. only. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd. $8 at Swindon, Hong Kong, May, '90.  Extra copy for $15 from Black Oak, Berkeley, July, '00.

This book of 37 fables has two very positive features: the coloring of Caxton's (primitive) woodcuts and the faithful rendition of his text with modern spelling and orthography. Different: the ox also steps on the expanding frog, and the boy bites off his mother's nose. The moral of 2W is different: If you are old, do not marry again! "The Widow of Ephesus" is included. There are nice partial images interspersed with the text in addition to the woodcuts.

1488?/1989 The Medici Aesop. Edited by Adele Westbrook. Translated from the Greek by Bernard McTigue. Color photographs of both sides of the 75 folios of the 1488(?) manuscript, including the miniatures of Gherardo di Giovanni. Dust jacket. Printed and bound in Japan. NY: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Gift of my nieces, Christmas, '89. Second copy for $48 from (more) Moe's. Another extra copy for $29.98 from Powell's, Portland, July, '93.

What a treasure! A good introduction gives a concise history of Aesop, the text of the fables, and the illustrations. This hand-written and hand-painted manuscript was done from a printed book, Bono Accurzio's 1480 version of Planudes' 1310 text. The versions are surprisingly concise and witty. Several morals wander into generalities. Well told: "The Old Woman and the Doctor" (44). Differently told: "The Eagle and the Fox" (20). The illustrations are magnificent but small. They often read from right to left. Some excellent illustrations: "The Fox and the Mask" (33), "The Broken Vow" (40), "The Thieving Child and His Mother" (71), OF (105), "The Ant-Man" (131), "The Thirsty Dove" (143). The boar sharpens his tusks on a whetting stone (78)! AD (64) story has a net, while its illustration has a bow.

1488?/2005 The Medici Aesop. Translated from the Greek by Bernard McTigue. Gherardo di Giovanni. Introduction by Everett Fahy. Afterword by H. George Fletcher. Paperbound. NY: The New York Public Library. $27.50 from Powell's, Portland, August, '08.

This book was published in a hardbound version by Harry N. Abrams in 1989. The lovely illustrations remain as precisely rendered here as there. In a curious move, Adele Westbrook, editor of the hardbound version, is not even mentioned here. Let me repeat my comments from that book. What a treasure! A good introduction gives a concise history of Aesop, the text of the fables, and the illustrations. This hand-written and hand-painted manuscript was done from a printed book, Bono Accurzio's 1480 version of Planudes' 1310 text. The versions are surprisingly concise and witty. Several morals wander into generalities. Well told: "The Old Woman and the Doctor" (44). Differently told: "The Eagle and the Fox" (20). The illustrations are magnificent but small. They often read from right to left. Some excellent illustrations: "The Fox and the Mask" (33), "The Broken Vow" (40), "The Thieving Child and His Mother" (71), OF (105), "The Ant-Man" (131), "The Thirsty Dove" (143). The boar sharpens his tusks on a whetting stone (78)! AD (64) story has a net, while its illustration has a bow.

1489/1929  Fábulas de Esopo. Reproducción en facsímile de la primera edición de 1489. Apparent title of original: La vida del ysopet con sus fabulas hystoriadas. Bibliography (and editing?) by Emilio Cotarelo y Mori. Madrid: Real Academia Española. $95 by mail from PRB&M, April, '95.

Palau calls this tall paperbound folio a "magnífica reproducción facsímile" (81959). The editors seem not to know of the Toulouse edition of 1488; see my Esopete Ystoriado (Toulouse 1488), published in 1990. Nor do they refer to this 1489 edition, as that 1990 book does, as from Zaragoza. This edition nicely lists on vii the five main parts of the 1489 book: (1) four books of Aesop, totalling eighty fables; (2) "extravagantes" of Aesop, totalling seventeen; (3) Remicio's Aesopic fables, totalling seventeen; (4) Avianus, totalling twenty-six; and (5) "colletas" of Pedro Alfonso, Poggio, and others--mostly satiric and picaresque--totalling twenty-two and finishing with MSA. There is on 20-52 an extensive bibliography of Spanish fable editions, including Iriarte, Samaniego, and other authors. I count twenty-nine illustrations for the life of Aesop besides the frontispiece, and I agree that they are good imitations of Steinhöwel. I am surprised to see that every one of the 162 fables gets a woodcut. I think this is my only facsimile of something directly related to Steinhöwel, and so it may be one of my most complete resources for his work too. A major find. Fable vii of the "extravagantes" is mis-numbered as viii (LXXVIII).

1518/1933 Aesop's Fables. Samuel Croxall's Translation with a Bibliographical Note by Victor Scholderer and Numerous Facsimiles of Florentine Woodcuts. Limited Editions Club. #1037 of 1500. Signed by Bruce Rogers. Boxed. Oxford: University Press. $120 at Santa Fe BookSeller, May, '93.

One of the nicest books I have. A triumph of the bookmaking art. The 46 facsimiles are beautifully reproduced. Very close to del Tuppo (eg #37 and #192), they often show two or three phases in one scene. #83, #162, #168, and #197 are well told and funny. In #173, the bat leaves both sides on his own initiative. How were the facsimiles printed?

1518/1933 Aesop's Fables: Samuel Croxall's Translation with a Bibliographical Note by Victor Scholderer. Numerous Facsimiles of Florentine Woodcuts. Victor Scholderer. #280 of 1500; signed by Bruce Rogers. Hardbound. Boxed.  Oxford: Limited Editions Club: Oxford University Press. $30 through eBay, Nov., '10.

I went after a second copy of this book because it was being offered so economically on eBay. I think it eluded the notice of other serious seekers. This copy includes from August, 1933, "The Monthly Letter of the Limited Editions Club" with a lead article on "B R's Aesop." Like the first copy I found, this is boxed, numbered, and signed by Bruce Rogers. As I mentioned when I first found that other book nineteen years ago, this is one of the nicest books I have. A triumph of the bookmaking art. The 46 facsimiles are beautifully reproduced. Very close to del Tuppo (eg #37 and #192), they often show two or three phases in one scene. #83, #162, #168, and #197 are well told and funny. In #173, the bat leaves both sides on his own initiative. How were the facsimiles printed? This and several similar cases have convinced me now to keep all the copies of valuable books like this -- especially those that have any difference like different numbering -- in the collection as separate listings.

1518/1933 Aesop's Fables: Samuel Croxall's Translation with a Bibliographical Note by Victor Scholderer.  Numerous Facsimiles of Florentine Woodcuts.  #289 of 1500; signed by Bruce Rogers.  Hardbound.  Oxford: Limited Editions Club:  Oxford University Press.  $42 from A. Dielski, Chicago, through eBay, August, '15.

I went after a third copy of this book because it was being offered so economically on eBay.  I think it eluded the notice of other serious seekers.  Like the first copy I found, this is numbered and signed by Bruce Rogers.  As I mentioned when I first found that other book many years ago, this is one of the nicest books I have.  A triumph of the bookmaking art.  The 46 facsimiles are beautifully reproduced.  Very close to del Tuppo (eg #37 and #192), they often show two or three phases in one scene.  #83, #162, #168, and #197 are well told and funny.  In #173, the bat leaves both sides on his own initiative.  How were the facsimiles printed?  This and several similar cases have convinced me now to keep all the copies of valuable books like this -- especially those that have any difference like different numbering -- in the collection as separate listings.  This copy once belonged to Howard Eleveth.

1542/1967 Emblematum Libellus. Andreas Alciatus and Wolfgang Hunger. Hardbound. Paris/Darmstadt: Christian Wechel/Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. €24 from Antiquariat Wirthwein, Mannheim, July, '07.

This is my first chance to look more carefully into Alciato. This volume itself is one of many good books I found at Wirthwein. I had not known that the Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft had done a reprint of Alciato's book of emblems. I seem to read that the original book of his that began the whole emblem movement was published in 1531. Perhaps it was a more modest book than this 1542 edition. Here we have one hundred and fifteen emblems, beginning on 18 and ending on 253. There is no apparent index. A typical pair of pages features on the left, a page number and standard page title ("And. Alc. Emblem. Lib."); a short title phrase and emblem number; an image regularly about 2½" x 2¾"; and a Latin poem of six or eight lines. The right hand page has a regular page title ("Das buechle der verschroten werck."), a German title and emblem number; and a German poem of about eight lines. Fable motifs occur but do not dominate. Emblem XXII is about the blind carrying the lame. Emblem XXXV -- "non tibi, sed religioni" -- is the fable of the ass carrying a religious image. He thinks that the people are honoring him. Emblem XLVIII shows the fox contemplating a human face and is titled "Mentem, non formam plus pollere." Emblem LI shows an ass carrying great food but stopping to eat a thistle. Emblem LIIII presents the beetle that got revenge on the eagle by getting all his eggs broken. Emblem LV presents the captured soldier-trumpeter who claimed -- without success -- that he had hurt no one. Emblem LVIII (misnumbered on the right page as LVII) is 2P. In Emblem LXXXIII, a man aiming his bow at a flying crane is killed by a snake: "Qui alta contemplantur cadere." Emblem LXXXIIII, "Impossibile," is about washing an Ethiopian white. Emblem LXXXVI has a curious mouse caught by an oyster that has clapped shut around him. In Emblem XCI (misprinted "CXI"), a goat has to suckle a young wolf and knows that this will not end well.

1544 Historia Vitae Fortunaeque Aesopi, cum Fabulis Illius. Joachim Camerarius. Apparently first thus. Hardbound. Leipzig: Ex Officina Recente Valentini Papae. $2200 from Serendipity, Dec., '08.

First, this little book has caused me as much anguish as any I have tried to win for the collection. For over three years I have been looking for it, thinking it lost. I presumed as a last hope that the book had got in with fable materials other than books and I hoped that I would find it, because I have sought it among my books many times over. I wondered if Serendipity had ever sent or given it to me, since I had to come up with a good deal of money to purchase it. I looked under the bed in my sister's guest room a year after purchasing it and then visiting there. Recently I had to clear some shelves in my room and came across this "Historia" book. That one word stands alone on the book's spine. It had been sitting on the shelf looking at me for three years. I presumed it was an old historical book someone had given me for some reason. Was I ever glad to be wrong! Though illustrations make many of the books in the collection very appealing, this book is one of the collection's special stars to me. The basic structure of this book includes a life of Aesop, Aesopic fables, "Narrationes Aesopicae" taken from various authors, and explication of Greek authors bearing on the fables. There is a letter to Rotingus dated 1539, alphabetical indices of characters and "subjects" in the sense of virtues and vices commented upon, and two pages of errata. I will excerpt here at length from Serendipity's description. Small octavo (14x9 cm), 19th-century March, '4 dark brown cloth, light brown pebbled cloth sides, marbled edges, plain endpapers. Six woodcut initials (white on black). Collation is Aa8, Bb4, A-Z8, a-m8, n3. ([xxi], 538, [xxviii]). Title continues: " ... pluribus quingentis, & aliis quibusdam narrationibus, compositis studio & diligentia Ioachimi Camerarii Pab. Quibus additae fuere & Liuianae duae, et Gellianae ac aliorum aliquot. His accessit interpretatio Graecorum & aliorum etiam quorundum multo quam ante uberior. Et indices duo, ipsi quoque accuratius quam prius editi." In Latin, with some Greek. This copy, while in excellent condition, has been closely trimmed, in a few places affecting the running titles. Some old underlining and marginalia; signature of Thomas Rhodes (great grandfather of Cecil Rhodes??) on title page. We can find no records of an earlier edition of this exact title by the renowned humanist, naturalist and scholar; however, less extensive collections of Aesop's fables by Camerarius (with or without biographical information) appeared in 1538 and 1539 in Tubingen and Nuremburg, 1540 in Nuremburg, and 1542 in Tubingen and Antwerp. Bodemann (no.34.1) notes that the first illustrated edition (1565) is an expanded version of a 1538 text. Camerarius was a prolific scholar, and Aesop seems to have been a continuing interest for him. He held academic appointments in the Classics at Nuremburg, Tubingen, and, as of 1541, Leipzig. Earlier editions of Aesop printed in Leipzig are Dorpius (1515 and 1517) and a small book of aphorisms (1497). Scarce. Does the tally of "more than 500 fables" make this book more comprehensive than L'Estrange's?

1547 La Vie et Fables d'Esope Phrygien Traduites de nouveau en Françoys, selon la verité Greacque; Auecq' les hystoires.  Paperbound.  Paris: Estienne Groulleau.  £1575 from Alice Through the Looking Glass, London, July, 22.

What a pleasure to include in the collection Number 26 in Bodemann's catalogue!  This little (3" x 4½") book is one of the stars of the collection.  It is in fair condition, hurt by a number of missing pages: xii-xiii; xv-xvi; xxii-xxv; xxix-xl; l-li; xci-xcii; and xciv-xcvii.  Above the title for XX, the page title is a lovely jumble of the word "Esope."  Twelve (of 14?) illustrations are present in the life of Aesop; the illustration for Chapitre xx shows Aesop's "sleeping wife of the master."  Among the strongest illustrations are these: CJ (I); WL (II); "Eagle and Fox," with a good fire (XII); "Ass and Lapdog" (XV); FS (XXIX); DW (XLV); "Stag and Horse" (LIII); DM (LXVIII); "Eagle and Crow" (LXX); 2W (LXXXIII); and "Monkey Mother (XIC).  I am happy to have found this little treasure on a 4th of July in Cecile Court just after pulling a hamstring!  It is bound together with (the first portion of?) Guillaume de la Perriere's "Le Theatre des Bons Engins," which includes, apparently, 89 of the work's 100 emblems.  First published by Janot in 1540 in Paris, with later editions in 1542 and 1544.  This 1546 edition by Jean de Tournes in Paris, a year after de Tournes' first edition of the work.  Groulleau, publisher of the fable book here, also did editions of "Le Theatre" in 1548, 1551, and 1561.

 

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1550 - 1599

1550/1934 Fabeln von Erasmus Alberus. Ein Nachwort von Wilhelm Matthiessen. 15 Holzschnitte von Vergil Solis. Berlin: Greif Bücherei. DM 8 at Antiquariat Richart Kulbach in Heidelberg, Aug., '88. Extra copy for DM 8 from Bücherwurm, Heidelberg, August, '01.

Good strong rhymes in Gothic script. The "Nachwort" is real Third Reich stuff, speaking of "eine Rückkehr zu den Urkraftquellen deutschen Volkstums." The stories are all Aesopic. There are wonderful woodcuts (which probably originally appeared in 1566) for the 15 fables and on the front cover. A little pearl!

1551 Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae Elegantissimis iconibus veras animalium species ad viuum adumbrantibus. Adam Knopff. Hardbound. Lyon: apud Ioannem Tornaesium. $600 from Thomas Joyce, Joyce and Company Antiquarian Booksellers, Chicago, July, '96.

This little book is an earlier edition of what had long been the oldest book in the collection, listed under "1619?" This book is Bodemann #29. What a great thing! Bodemann's twenty-ninth oldest book! See my description of the later edition, including the following. One of the gems of this collection. Undersized and fragile. Bilingual in columns of Greek and Latin through 179, including: definitions of fable by Aphthonius and Philostratos, life of Aesop, and 150 fables (beginning on 119). Then several sections are bilingual on facing pages: 43 fables of Gabrius, the Battle of Mice and Frogs, the Battle of Cats and Mice. This book does not have the last section that appears in the edition I have put in 1619, namely 42 Latin fables by Avienus. There are many wonderful small illustrations with the 150 fables. The best of the illustrations: "The Fox and the Goat" (125), "The Ass and the Horse" (189), "The Eagle and the Turtle" (192), "The Ethiopian" (206), "The Mistress and the Two Servants" (209), and WC (273). I notice that, though all the illustrations here seem identical with their later counterparts, others from the later edition are not here, like "The Cat and the Mice" (154). There is an AI of fables at the back. Pages 129-130 are lacking. The spine and binding are badly damaged.

1569 Esopus Leben und Fabeln.  Johann Adelphus Muling.  Woodcuts by Benedict Kumpt.  Hardbound.  Freiburg im Breisgau: Steffan Graff.  $2125 from RareTome.com, Newburg, OR, June, ‘21.  

This book joins the stars of this collection.  I will not get closer to a Steinhoewel or Brandt.  (Brandt’s 1501 is available for $75,000 on ABEbooks.)  I will first quote the seller’s description: “Wonderfully restored book, with the works of both Heinrich Steinhowel, and Sebastian Brandt (the latter considered to be one of the best Latin translations of the 16th century, translated into German by Johann Adelphus Muling). Also includes fables attributed to Avianus, Poggio (his Dirty Speeches), among others. This edition includes the well-respected title page illustration (based on the Ulm Aesop’s title page) and many small woodcuts of Benedict Kumpt, a painter from Mulhouse in Alsace (mentioned in Basel court records from 1520-1527). On the title page, around Aesop, are scenes from his life and fables. This copy has been lovingly restored, handsomely bound, and is now complete (rare, for this work) though with some facsimile leaves. The facsimile leaves were copied from a second 1569 copy, on laid paper, so they fill the missing spaces perfectly.  Leaves partially repaired with facsimile joined by tissue to extant - 101, 129, 132, 143, 153. Entire facsimile leaf, bound in, laid paper (not aged, photocopy)- 102 to 109, 111, 117 to 127, 130, 134, 135, 151, 152, 171 and 172 (twenty-seven leaves). Full-page title page illustration, and many small woodcuts throughout the text block.  Pigskin binding (not polished, possibly reversed), blind-tooled.”   “Socis Jesu (ind?) Ao 1626" written at top of title page: I presume that this book was in the seventeenth century in some Jesuit library.  This book is Bodemann #23.4.  Wow!  That is early!  Bodemann lists printings in 1531, 1535, 1545, and then this edition.  About other printings, the seller makes this note: “I can't find record of an existing 1531 copy. Three copies of the 1545 edition are recorded at OCLC (845347487, 934310835), and one in The Morgan (PML126057). Two copies of the 1555 edition are recorded in OCLC (44823222). Four copies of the 1569 edition in OCLC (1099940054, 493659847, 930659159).  5½” x 7¼”

1570 Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae Elegantissimis iconibus veras animalium species ad viuum adumbrantibus.  Hardbound.  Lyon: apud Ioannem Tornaesium.  £505 from C. Rodrigues, Littlehampton, UK, through eBay, Jan., '14.  

Here is a precious addition to the collection, both for its antiquity and its excellent condition.  The one shortcoming of its condition is that the title-page seems to be a xerox copy.  As Bodemann #29.2, it fits into this collection as a later edition of Bodemann #29.1 from 1551.  I also have Bodemann #29.4 from 1614.  Bodemann calls this an expanded and changed reprinting of the 1551 edition.  There is no longer an address to the reader by Adam Knopff, then the editor.  The expansion involves the forty-two fables of Avienus now included at the end, before the AI of fables.  The book now has 410 + 6 pages, whereas the 1551 printing had 375 + 7.  The woodcuts are "Nachschnitte."  That volume had 39 fable illustrations but this one has 61. Bilingual in columns of Greek and Latin through 179, including: definitions of fable by Aphthonius and Philostratos, life of Aesop, and 150 fables (beginning on 119).  Then several unillustrated sections are bilingual on facing pages: 43 fables of Gabrius beginning on 288, the Battle of Mice and Frogs, the Battle of Cats and Mice.  Some of the best illustrations are: "The Fox and the Goat" (125: my choice for best illustration overall), "The Birdcatcher and the Viper" (160), "The Woodcutter and Mercury" (177), "The Ass and the Horse" (194), "The Eagle and the Turtle" (198), "The Ethiopian" (212), and "The Mistress and the Two Servants" (215).  Not all of the illustrations are equally distinct or equally well done.

1570/1621/1832 The Moral Fables of Robert Henryson. Reprinted from the edition of Andrew Hart. Edinburgh: The Maitland Club. $15 at Goodspeed's, March, '89.

A lovely old book, the cover of which is in bad shape. This is not a facsimile but a reprint, and so the print is much more legible than in the Da Capo edition. The morals are printed in contemporary script. T of C near the rear. A roster of the Maitland Club and a discussion of Henryson appear at the beginning of the volume.

1570/1970 Aesop: The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian. ...in Eloquent, and Ornate Scottis Meter. Be Maister Robert Henrisone. Newlie Imprentit at Edinburgh, be Robert Lekpreuik (?) at the expensis of Henrie Charteris. No illustrations. NY: Da Capo Press: Plenum Publishing Co. $25 from the publisher, Feb., '89.

This is a facsimile of the 13 fables in this very early collection. Seven-line stanzas, medium print quality, difficult vocabulary and orthography.

1571/1987 The Moral Fables of Aesop by Robert Henryson. An Edition of the Middle Scots Text, with a Facing Prose Translation, Introduction, and Notes by George D. Gopen. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Hardbound $11.50 at MacIntyre & Moore, June, '91. Paperback at the same time from Harvard Book Store for $5.38. Extra paperback for $7.50 at Avenue Victor Hugo, Boston, April, '89.

A first-rate piece of scholarship that puts Henryson within our reach. Very readable versions of the 13 fables. Henryson's morals are strongly allegorical and (like the fables) lengthy, but the stories are well done, especially "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Cadger"; "The Fox, the Wolf, and the Farmer"; and "The Wolf and the Wether." Clever Lawrence the fox outwits everyone. There is strong, eloquent social criticism, e.g. concerning the sheep misaccused by the dog before the wolf. At times Henryson is preachy, e.g. about the maids that sweep a jewel out of the house just to get the floor clean! There is fun in the stories, as when the fox with a penance of no meat during Lent takes a kid to water and brings him out a salmon, or the frightened wolf defecates three times when pursued by (a wether disguised as) a dog. Many mice come to help the roped-in lion. WL is less well done; I think I might have killed that talky lawyerlike lamb myself!

1579/1975 Mythologia Ethica. Arnoldus Freitag. Illustrations by Marcus Gheeraerts. Hardbound. Antwerp/Athens: Philippe Galle, Christophorus Plantinus/George Ladias Limited. $102.51 from G. Spanos, Athens, Greece, through eBay, May, '08.

This may be the first true emblem book in this collection, and it is high time. This is a fine example. Bodemann (51.1) may be slightly incorrect when it gives the sequence for each of these 125 fables. On the left page is a title, Latin prose text, and moral. On the right hand page (not the left) is a short "motto," a Gheeraerts illustration, and an apt scriptural quotation. The Gheeraerts illustrations are better presented in A Moral Fable-Talk (1987), but here they are put together with the emblematic materials that constituted a strong phase of the fable tradition. The title-page here offers this description: "Hoc est moralis philosophiae per fabulas brutis attributas, traditae, amoenissimum viridarium. In quo humanae vitae labyrintho demonstrato virtutus semita pulcherrimis praeceptis, veluti Thesei filo docet." That "viridarium" is a pleasure-garden. Unfortunately, Bodemann does not offer a specific source for these texts. Are they Freitag's own? The bottom of each page has the first syllable of the following page, even moving from a left to a right page. Some of the impressions are understandably light. Even in this slightly shadowy representation, Gheeraerts' work is splendid!

1593/1976/96  Esopo No Fabulas. Photographic facsimile of the original edition owned by the British Library. Explained by Kunimichi Fukushima. Ninth edition. Tokyo: Benseisha Co. ¥1349 at the Sophia University Bookstore, July, '96.

Fr. Francis Mathy was good enough to order this for me after we found out in our conversation with Satoru Obara, S.J., that this facsimile was still in print. Obara reports on this booklet in his little monograph, Companions of Jesus in the Kirishitan Era in Japan (1994), a copy of which he was good enough to give me. There is also an article on it, "Aesop's Arrival in Japan in the 1590's" by Yuichi Midzunoe, in Peter Milward's The Mutual Encounter of East and West, 1492-1992 (1992), a copy of which Peter was kind enough to give me. This book of Aesop's fables was the first translation of European literature into Japanese. It includes an abridged life of Aesop and some seventy fables. It exists bound with two other works in a single copy in the British Library (note the stamp on 142). The other stories are "The Heike Story" and "A Collection of Golden Words." My understanding is that the Aesop booklet was meant as much to help Catholic missionaries learn the language as it was to give them a small arsenal of not-immediately-Christian stories to use in their first contacts with Japanese people. Thus the script is Western, and there is a long vocabulary on 101-142 after a short T of C for the fables (97-100) and before four pages of contemporary notes. This was one of the earliest books printed on the press that the Jesuits brought to the Far East. Aesop appears here at a critical moment in the encounter of East and West. From this little start, the fables endured with the Japanese people much longer than the Jesuits were allowed to!

1599 Cento favole morali de i piu illustri antichi, & moderni autori Greci, & Latini.  Giovanni Mario Verdizotti.  Hardbound.  Venice: Sebastian Combi.  $800 from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company, August, ‘21.  

It is such a pleasure to include another sixteenth-century book in the collection!  253 pages plus l1 pages of T of C at the end.  Page numbering is confused between 219 and 227.  Bodemann #42.3 lists for this 1599 edition a different publisher, Alessandro de Vecchi.  She also lists Verdizotti as #43, not #42, in the “Author Index.”  PRBM writes of the book: “Scarce, charmingly petite edition of Italian artist and writer Verdizotti’s popular collection of illustrated fables taken from classical sources, here with one hundred in-text woodcuts, one for each fable.  These cuts are based on his earlier designs, sometimes said to have been inspired by his friend Titian.  The text is printed in single columns using italic type for the fables, with morals printed in roman; decorative initials and endpieces complete the work.”  The first edition was in 1570.  This edition is uncommon.  Apparently only one other copy is known in the USA.  I agree that the illustrations are wonderful!  And, my, the paper is thin!  Among the better illustrations, I will mention SW (58); BC (91); SS (97); WC (141); TMCM (144); FG (157); FC (159); WL (186); and DLS (194).  Watch out also for “Horse and Stag” (109); “Wolf Become Shepherd” (115); “Carter in the Mud” (140); “The Fat Fox” (169); and “Lion in Love” (220).  There is a poorly executed illustration of a leopard on 123.

 

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1600 - 1649

1602/1974 The Etymologist of Aesops Fables. Containing the construing of his Latine fables into English; also The Etymologist of Phaedrus fables, containing the construing of Phaedrus (a new found yet auncient Author) into English, verbatim. Both very necessarie helps for young schollers. Compiled by Simon Sturtevant. London: Printed by Richard Field for Robert Dexter. Reprinted by Walter J. Johnson, Inc. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ltd. $20 from Dundee Books, Nov., '92.

Sixty-nine pages of phrase-by-phrase and then word-by-word construing of some fifty or so Latin fables of Aesop. Then, after the straight verse texts of the 31 fables of Book 1 of Phaedrus, they are treated the same way. The introductions "to the industrious and discreet Schoolemaister" (A ii and 87) may give a good idea of early 17th-century pedagogy.

1610 Mythologia Aesopica, in qua, Aesopi Fabulae Graecolatinae CCXCVII. quarum CXXXVI. primum prodeunt. Accedunt Babriae Fabulae etiam auctiores; Haec omnia ex Bibliotheca Palatina.  Isaac Nicolaus Nevelet.  Illustrations after (?) Virgil Solis.  First edition.  Hardbound.  Frankfurt: Jonas Rosa & Nicolaus Hoffmann.  $700 from William Chrisant & Sons, Fort Lauderdale, FL through Biblio, Dec., ‘24.

I rejoiced a year and a half ago to bring a second edition Nevelet into the collection (Bodemann #60.2).  Now here is a first edition!  It is indeed a variorum edition, celebrated by the seller to be as important as the 1479 Accursio and 1546 Estienne editions.  This copy, 3½" x 6", has both its front and back covers separated.  Pages 486-530 are interposed between 512 and 513.  The Bodemann listings (#60.1 and #60.2) seem not entirely correct.  #60.2 notes the addition of 148 fables not previously published; in fact, they are here in #60.1 and not accounted for.  In addition, Bodemann here seems to list the 40 Aphthonius prose fables twice.  Since the book does not have a T of C and is so wide-ranging, let me offer a listing of sections with numbers of fables and page ranges.  After introductory material, the Vita Aesopi is on 4-82.  Aesop (Aldus Manutius collection, #1-149) is on 83-211.  Previously unedited Aesop texts (#150-297) are on 212-321 [this section Bodemann seems to overlook here but to introduce as new in 1660].  Aphthonius #1-40 follow on 322-53.  Then come Gabrius #1-43 and Babrius #1-11 on 354-87; Phaedrus (#1-90 on 388-42); Avienus (#1-42 on 453-485); Anonymi (#1-60 on 486-530); and Laurentius Abstemius (#1-99 on 531-618).  There follow then Nevelet's extensive notes on 621-678.  "Aesopi," "Aphtonii," "Gabrii," and "Babrii" are all delivered in Greek with Latin translations, the first two in parallel columns and the latter two in sequential quatrains.  The woodcuts imitate those of Virgil Solis.  Many of them recur as their fables appear in multiple collections.  Beautifully rendered are, for example, 2W (214); "Ass and Lapdog" (262); and DLS (361).

1610/2023 Mythologia Aesopica, in qua, Aesopi Fabulae Graecolatinae CCXCVII. quarum CXXXVI. primum prodeunt. Accedunt Babriae Fabulae etiam auctiores; Haec omnia ex Bibliotheca Palatina.  Isaac Nicolaus Nevelet.  (After) Virgil Solis.  Hardbound.  India: Skilled Books.  $43.49 from World of Books through AbeBooks, Feb., '25.

This is a disappointing edition.  I ordered it at the time when I found an original 1610 edition, thinking that I could reduce wear on that early volume.  If I hoped to use the recent to comprehend the earlier, the opposite is true.  Perhaps the publishers' decision to expand the page size -- from 3.5" x 6" to 5.5" x 8.5" -- is responsible, but much of the book is so blotted that it can be hard to comprehend.  The Greek is particularly compromised.  For some reason, this edition cuts the book off at 638, not 678; they thus sacrifice some of Nevelet's valuable notes.  After introductory material, the Vita Aesopi is on 4-82.  Aesop (Aldus Manutius collection, #1-149) is on 83-211.  Previously unedited Aesop texts (#150-297) are on 212-321 [this section Bodemann seems to overlook here but to introduce as new in 1660].  Aphthonius #1-40 follow on 322-53.  Then come Gabrius #1-43 and Babrius #1-11 on 354-87; Phaedrus (#1-90 on 388-452); Avienus (#1-42 on 453-485); Anonymi (#1-60 on 486-530); and Laurentius Abstemius (#1-99 on 531-618).  There follow then Nevelet's extensive notes on 621-end.  "Aesopi," "Aphtonii," "Gabrii," and "Babrii" are all delivered in Greek with Latin translations, the first two in parallel columns and the latter two in sequential quatrains.  The woodcuts imitate those of Virgil Solis.  Many of them recur as their fables appear in multiple collections. 

1614 Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae Elegantissimis iconibus illustratae. Hardbound. Lyon: Jean Jullieron. $499 from Salomon Rosenthal, TX, Sept., '1

Bodemann finds the texts here stemming from the Jean de Tournes edition of 1551 in Lyon. Bodemann also sees the fable illustrations as copies of those in the Jean de Tournes-Guillaume Gazeau edition of 1549 from Lyon. The Bodemann description fits this little book down to the five added pages for the T of C after the 427 pages of the book. Small in format, 3⅛" x 4½", it is in exceptional condition for its age. The title-page advertises the addition of desired illustrations (twenty-seven of them) to the life of Aesop. The first of the images, which accompanies the excerpt from Philostratus, is a strong depiction of Aesop himself with animals--though, of course, like all the images, it is unfortunately small (2" x 1½"). There are fifty-two illustrations for the fables. As an example, try "The Fox and the Goat" on 145. This book is another pearl in this collection! 

1619? Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae. Elegantissimis iconibus veras animalium species ad viuum adumbrantibus. Title pages missing. Identical with a volume, dated 1619 and published "apud Ioannem Tornaesium" in London, found in the Leighton library, Dunblane. This book is dated in pencil "1570 or 1582" by someone. Front cover separated. $85.50 at McNaughton's, Edinburgh, July, '92.

One of the gems of this collection. Undersized and fragile. Bilingual in columns of Greek and Latin for its first few sections: definitions of fable by Aphthonius and Philostratos; life of Aesop; and 150 fables (beginning on 119). Then several sections are bilingual on facing pages: 43 fables of Gabrius; the Battle of Mice and Frogs; the Battle of Cats and Mice. The last section has just Latin: 42 fables by Avienus. There are many wonderful small illustrations with the 150 fables, some of them marked with ink or color. The best of the illustrations: "The Fox and the Goat" (125), "The Cat and the Mice" (154), "The Ass and the Horse" (194), "The Eagle and the Turtle" (198), "The Ethiopian" (212), "The Mistress and the Two Servants" (215), "The Man and the Satyr" (260), WC (281). There is also a great hand-drawn ink cartoon (of some teacher?) on 299. There are bookplates from two prior owners. See the attached title-page and index-card xerox from the Leighton library.

1621 The Moral Fables of Robert Henryson. Reprinted from the edition of Andrew Hart. Edinburgh: The Maitland Club. See 1570/1621/1832.

1628? Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae Elegantissimis iconibus veras animalium species ad viuum adumbrantibus (Title-page missing).  Hardbound.  Geneva?: apud Ioannem Tornaesium?  £150 from Celsus Books, London, March, '22.

This may be our fourth or fifth book in the family of Bodemann 29.  We have a clear edition of 1551, a solid edition of 1570, and a supposed edition of 1619.  In addition, there is the 1614 edition of Jean Jullieron.  I will now quote the seller's introduction to this little book: "An interesting early illustrated Aesop in Greek and Latin, without its title page and last page of index, in a contemporary binding. 16mo., 410, [6] pp. 70 attractive illustrations to text, contemporary stamped calf, worn to head and foot of spine, light staining to inner gutter, pages a little browned, occasional early manuscript note.  Attributed (mistakenly) in a manuscript note on front board to Burgkmair, 1547. However, we presume it is the Geneva edition by Joannes de Tournes printed in 1628, with illustrations very close (but not identical) to that of Salomon. Please note condition, but still a very charming book."  I will go with that guess of 1628, but I note that the pagination squares exactly with the editions of 1570 and 1619(?).  This book could be any of those "apud Ioannem Tornaesium" editions in and after 1570.  What a pity that the title-page is missing!  Another beautiful little book!

1645? Candidatus Rhetoricae. (Or Novus Candidatus.) Author unknown. Handwritten card says "Elzevers ed., Amsterdam." $20 at Blake, June, '93.

This little book is a find whatever it finally turns out to be! For now it seems to be a Jesuit collegium text in rhetoric following the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius. If one works from the back of the book, there is an apparently independent 48-page work, Angelus Pacis by Nicolas Caussini (Latinized name), S.J. The rest of the book seems to be a commentary on or presentation of Aphthonius' Progymnasmata in 3 parts covering 435 pages, followed by a T of C and an AI, which is often one page off. Pars II is titled "Rhetoricae Praecepta," Pars III "De Panegyrico seu Laudatione." Pars I seems to be "Apparatus ad Fabulam et Narrationem." Fable is handled on 15-31. After the famous Greek definition of Theion done into Latin ("sermo falsus veritatem effingens"), the author distinguishes "rational" (human) and "moral" (animal) fables, with "mixed" fables including both. He holds (19) that the sense of the fable generally needs to be expressed; otherwise people often miss the point of a fable. His Latin for promythium is "praefabulatio," for epimythium "affabulatio." "Apologus" and "parabola" are identical for him with "fabula." After describing the qualities and uses of fables, the author presents some nine fables that exemplify various levels of style, twice telling the same stories on two levels (WL and FC). The last example is of the florid style: "The Silkworm and the Spider" takes four pages to tell! I found this book sitting in a box of disparate, unmarked, old books. It pays to look!

1649 Les Fables D'Esope Phrygien. Illustrées de Discours Moraux, Philosophiques, & Politiques.  Jean Baudoin.  Illustrations: Marie Briot.  Nouvelle édition.  Hardbound.  Paris: Jean du Bray.  DKK3,500 from Herman Lynge, Copenhagen, 4April, '21.

As the seller indicates, the spine is gone and the covers loose but the block is intact, with all 118 full-page fable illustrations, one for each fable.  The seller's shorthand description is revealing because it lists three parts: "(22),102,(4),712 - (8),112 pp. Titlepage to part 2 with engraved portrait. With all 118 full-page engraved illustrations (numb. 1-118)."  There are really three parts here.  The first of the three parts starts with two title-pages and various introductory materials.  The first title-page, explicitly dated "1631" (the date of Bodemann #67.1) lists as its publishers Toussainct DuBray, Matthieu Guillemot, Pierre Roccolet, and Antoine de Sommaville.  It presents a strong image of Aesop above a collection of animals.  The second title-page, without image, lists only Jean Du Bray as the publisher, carries the date 1659, and announces the addition of the fables of Philelphe.  The first part then offers a full-page illustration of Aesop featured in Fabula Docet" (#17) followed by the life of Aesop without illustrations.  Then comes the long second part, begun with a T of C of fables.  This portion includes the 118 numbered full-page images for Aesop's fables, apparently executed by Marie Briot.  The engraved portrait, also dated 1659, mentioned by the seller starts the third part, the "fables of Philelphe," presented without illustrations.  Francois Philelphe died in Florence in 1481.  From what I can gather, his fables are longish developments of Aesop-like stories, with extensive reflections after each prose story.  His eighteen "fables" here take up the 112 pages of the third part.  There is something of a mystery here as the seller indicates a date of 1649.  Bodemann gives that same date for Parts II and III in #67.1.  These considerations lead me to wonder if we have #67.1, #67.2, or something in between.  A look at the first third of the illustrations confirms Bodemann's notice of the influence Gheeraerts.  The motifs seem to be very close to those we will recognize in Barlow and Hollar.  I look forward to further comparison of this volume with our (other?) 1659 Du Bray Baudoin.from Antiquariat Canicio in Heidelberg.  This copy is so fragile!

 

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1650 - 1699

1651 The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse, and adorned with Sculpture. By John Ogilby. Franz Cleyn. London: Printed by Thomas Warren for Andrew Crook. $2,300 from Scott Ellis, Nov., '00.

Bodemann #70.1. Here is the costliest book in my collection. I never thought I would have a chance at it! This book has lost its binding, though its boards are still present. After an "epistle dedicatory," a tribute by W. D'Avenant, another tribute by James Shirley, and an imprimatur, we find the eighty-one verse fables in four books (including 22, 20, 18, and 21 fables, respectively). Bodemann rightly calls these "Fabelnachdichtungen." As she says, Aesopic material is broadened by additions, examples, dialogues, citations from ancient history and mythology, and royalistic allusions to contemporary events. Cleyn's frontispiece of Ogilby seems to be lacking, but the second frontispiece is here: Aesop talks to the people in the midst of the animals. There is one plate for Fables 14 and 15. Plate 58 is lacking here. Bodemann says that the image motifs are oriented to Gheeraerts but include many new creations. To my surprise, neither the text nor the illustrations are a clean match for the 1668 reprint from the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. That reprint was done from the second edition, which seems to have had not only new art but changes in the text and a considerable addition of footnotes and notations. Some images here have been colored. Among the images I find best are "The Mountain in labour" (#8), "Of the Boare and the Asse" (#11), "Of the Husband-man and the Serpent" (#16), "Of the Old Hownd and his Master" (#18), "Of the Dog and the Thief" (#21), "Of the Lyon grown old" (#23), FS (#26), "Of the Horse and laden Asse" (#48), SW (#65), OR (#67), and "Of the Youngman and the Cat" (#73). My favorite remains "Of the Rebellion of the Hands and Feet" (#47). In general, these illustrations seem sketchier than those of the 1668 second edition. Note that Ogilby follows the tradition of having a wolf rather than a fox come upon the carved head (#22). This book is crumbling in my hands, but it is a treasure!

1659 Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien: Traduction Nouuelle. Illustrée de Discours Moraux, Philosophiques & Politiques. Par J[ean] Baudoin. Avec les figures en taille douce. Hardbound. Paris: Chez Pierre Rocolet. €280 from Antiquariat Canicio, Heidelberg, August, '12.

I already have a copy of a 1660 Baudoin. I mention there the Paris edition by du Bray in 1659. Bodemann writes at the end of the comment on that 1659 edition that other copies have three other publishers' names: Rocolet, Courbé, and Sommaville. This is one of the Rocolet copies. Bodemann calls the 1659 edition a slightly altered and reduced "Nachdruck" of the 1631 original published by Courbé and Sommaville. This copy is not identical in pagination with that 1660 copy that we have. This copy has flaws. 15-16 and 102-9 are missing in this copy, and there are two sets of pages 581-90, though both sets of pages are where they should be. The printer simply forgot to change his second digit. The illustration for "The Sick Ass and the Wolf" on 328 has been colored green. The illustration for "The Tortoise and the Eagle" (504) has a hole. The illustration for "The Lion and the Goat" (608) is damaged. Canicio counts 120 illustrations. Baudoin's first edition in 1631 in Paris contained only 117 Aesopic fables, reportedly translated by Pierre Boissat. Roman page numbers run through the life and T of C, and start anew at Roman 1 for the fables. Philelphus has his own newly paginated section of 110 pages right after 712. However it happened, this edition has 118 fables. Generally, a fable in large print about a page long is followed by a discourse in small print about two pages long. Some of the discourses reach considerable length; "The Greedy and the Envious" (582) and CP (612) seem to get the record with about seventeen pages of discourse each! Several fables have not a "discours" but only a "remarque." Every fable has an impressive numbered full-page copper-plate, like those in the 1631 edition always on the left side facing the beginning of the fable. Sometimes, as on 61, that process means leaving a whole right page blank. The source for the visual motifs is Gheeraerts, as can be seen in "The Satyr and the Traveller" (638). Two of my favorites among the magnificent illustrations are DS (20) and "The Laborer and the Serpent" (34). "The Dog and the Ass" (84) is also strong. In FK (108), Jupiter in the heavens already has the log in his hand. "The Thief and the Dog" (120) represents more good work. The clear vase in FS (164) allows the fox to see what he is missing inside it. "The Man and the Lion" (338) reverses the monument-relief's lie right before our eyes. The cut-away of the well is curious in "The Fox and the Wolf" (386). 2W (478) shows a man with a curious facial expression as both women work diligently on him. The excellent picture of Aesop facing his life (1) is the only one I notice here to have "Briot sc" inscribed. "Du Laboureur et du Serpent" (34) does not have Briot's name, as it seems to have in the 1660 copy. One hinge of the spine-cover is detached. A great find on a day in Heidelberg! 

1660 Fabulae Variorum Auctorum.  Isaac Nicolaus Neveletus.  Woodcuts after Solis. Hardbound.  Frankfurt: Christoph Gerlach and Simon Beckenstein.  £460 from FineCopy Rare and Collectable Books through Ebay, August, '23.

It is thrilling to bring this book into the collection!  It is the second, augmented, edition of the 1610 original which had the title "Mythologia Aesopica."  "Variorum" is appropriate.  Eight different collections are presented here in their entirety as they were known then.  The edition is augmented in that it includes in its first section, "Fabulae Aesopi," some 148 Greek fables not in the 1610 edition.  The division of the work is significant.  Sections marked by "Aesopi," "Aphtonii," "Gabrii," and "Babrii" are all delivered in Greek with Latin translations, the first two in parallel columns and the latter two in sequential quatrains.  There follow four Latin collections.  Of these, the title-page lists first the "Anonymus Neveleti," perhaps because, like the four Greek collections, it comes from the Bibliotheca Palatina.   The book offers the four Latin collections in this order: Phaedrus, Avienus, Anonymus, and Abstemius.  The title-page offers the count of each.  The total number of fables comes to 781.  The woodcuts imitate those of Virgil Solis.  Many of them recur as their fables appear in multiple collections.  Two of the most frequently repeated illustrations are DLS (127; 329; 361; and 457) and FC (256; 345; 364; 397; and 497).  The editor apparently does not mind that the same illustration of ass and boar appears on 585 and 588.  [16] 678 pages; 237 woodcuts; 3½" x 6".

1660 Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien: Traduction Nouuelle. Illustrée de Discours Moraux, Philosophiques & Politiques. Par J[ean] Baudoin. Avec les figures en taille douce. Hardbound. Rouen: Chez Jean & David Berthelin. £175 from Abbey Antiquarian, June, '98.

Fabula Docet lists three Baudoin editions in its catalogue (#12, 17, 123). Baudoin's first edition in 1631 in Paris contained only 117 Aesopic fables, reportedly translated by Pierre Boissat. With the ethical and political commentary promised in the title, the book already came to 653 pages! For the new edition in 1645, Baudoin broadened the vita and in 1649 he added 18 fables of Franciscus Philelphus (1398-1481). Fabula Docet also presents on 100 the Paris edition of 1659 published by Jean Du Bray. The picture of Aesop as frontispiece to his vita there seems to be the source in mirror-reverse-view for mine here facing the beginning of the vita. (Roman page numbers run through the vita and T of C, and start anew at Roman 1 for the fables.) Bodemann (#67) says of the 1631 edition that its Aesopic fables follow the selection and sequence of the anonymous French collection of 1547. She lists several derivative Baudoin editions--all including the fables of Philelphus--but not this one. The title-plate of this copy is noteworthy. A strong figure at its center holds the instruments of military and hunting power and communicates with the animals arranged below him. I find in this copy 118 fables listed, and I do not see any reference to Philelphus. The whole work finishes on 638. Generally, a fable in large print about a page long is followed by a discourse in small print about two pages long. Some of the discourses reach considerable length; CP (551) seems to get the record with almost seventeen pages of discourse! There is already a hint here of the way Croxall will build sermons on top of the fables! OF (200) allows a reader to catch breath, since it has not a "discours" but only a "remarque." Every fable has an impressive numbered full-page copper-plate, like those in the 1631 edition always on the left side facing the beginning of the fable. Sometimes, as on 201, that means leaving a whole right page blank. The source for the visual motifs is Gheeraerts, as can be seen clearly in "The Satyr and the Traveller" (574). DS (16) is the first to have "Marie Briot sc" inscribed, and it is one of the best illustrations. "Du Laboureur et du Serpent" (28) is another strong Briot illustration. "The Dog and the Ass" (100) is also strong. The illustrations, e.g. of the master's face here, can have so much more detail than smaller ones I have been looking at recently, like those of Chauveau or Remondini. In FK (118), Jupiter in the heavens already has the log in his hand. "The Thief and the Dog" (130) represents more good work. The clear vase in FS (166) allows the fox to see what he is missing inside it. "The Man and the Lion" (308) reverses the monument-relief's lie right before our eyes. The cut-away of the well is curious in "The Fox and the Wolf" (350). 2W (426) shows a man with a curious facial expression as both women work diligently on him. I had to hand carry this book in my travels from Cheltenham to Naples and through Germany. We became very good friends!

1660? (Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien).  Jean Baudoin.  Hardbound.  $200 from The Presbyterian Baptist through Ebay, Sept., '21.

This book represents a significant addition to the collection in a family already richly represented.  The family of Bodemann #67.1, associated with Jean Baudoin as its author, contains four editions (1631, 1659, 1682, and 1683).  Our collection already has editions in this family dated 1649, 1659, 1660, and 1669.  This present copy has its own place among them.  Cataloguing this book is challenging because pages are lacking at the beginning and -- almost certainly -- at the end.  Elements to note near the beginning are these: the first present pages are in the "Epistre," signed by Baudoin.  After a notice to the reader, there is an unillustrated life of Aesop (1-131) begun with a strong full-page illustration of Aesop signed by Briot and featured in "Fabula Docet."  There follows an unpaginated T of C of 118 individual fables -- the last on 650 -- and, finally, a statement of royal privilege signed by Renovard and dated 1631.  At this copy's end, there is a statement "end of the 117th fable" at the bottom of 648; pagination had started over for the fables themselves.  Along the way, each fable receives a full-page illustration, many of them dependent, I believe, on Gheeraerts.  Examples of strong and familiar illustrations include "Thief and Dog" (#21 on 113) and "Traveler and Satyr" (#106 on 585).  Pages 15-16 are missing.  Numeration of the fables is off in their 80's; these are listed as though they are 90's.  Image pages are printed on the verso, and the paper is very thin.  Each fable is followed here by a "discours" or a "remarque."  By contrast with some other Baudoin editions, there is no "Philelphus" section here after the Aesop section.  Apparently all of these Baudoin editions follow the order and number of fables found in Bodemann #26.1, an anonymous French collection of 1547.  I gather that the 1669 edition turns to a different artist for its illustrations.  4¼" x 6¾".  I will leave it to bibliographers with more resources and time than me to discern the publisher and date of this lovely book!

1664 Vita Di Esopo Frigio, Prudente, & Facetto Favelatore. Tradutto dal Sig. Conte Giulio Landi. Hardbound. Venice: Per Il Cestari. $183.50 from Brakov, Hampshire, UK through eBay, July, '08.

Here is a great little addition to the collection. It most closely approximates Bodemann #52.3 but was published nine years earlier. The publisher there is listed as "Erben des Giovanni Baptista Cestari," with a publication date of 1673. Here it is simply "Per Il Cestari" in 1664. The dimensions, page numbers, and other bibliographical specifics of the book seem otherwise the same. With vellum covers, this little Italian translation of 400 fables on 419 pages with a T of C at the end has lost its spine. The "Vita" lasts through 144. After each fable there is a "Sentenza." Bodemann #52.3 has 139 illustrations. That number is at least approximately correct for this version. As in that edition, there is frequent repeating of images. Thus the image on 147 is the same as that on 386, and the image on 191 is the same as that on 214. The front cover shows a number of worm holes. The illustrations are delightful but of varying quality, both in their artistic conception and in their printing. The book is very fragile.

1666 Aesop's Fables with his Life: in English, French, and Latin, Newly Translated. English by Thomas Philipott, French and Latin by Robert Codrington. Illustrated with one hundred and ten sculptures by Francis Barlow. First edition. Hardbound. London. $4000 from Stephen Zabriski, Dublin, CA, April, '06.

Here is one of the foremost treasures of this collection! Barlow did a first edition, to which this book belongs, in 1666. As Hobbs reports, "The original edition had been printed in 1666, a year after Ogilby's folio collection, but most copies vanished in the Great Fire of London. Barlow's one hundred and ten vigorous compositions -- which he etched himself -- gave fresh impetus to the ever-persisting influence of Marcus Gheeraerts' genre pictures, which had yielded a whole succession of imitations since their first appearance in 1567." There are actually one hundred and twelve illustrations, including the frontispiece -- Aesop and the animals -- and title-page. The title-page actually dates the book to 1665. After three lives of Aesop -- English, French, and Latin -- each fable has its own program: a French prose version with "Le Sens Moral"; the half-page illustration including the English verse version; and the Latin prose version with its moral. So many of these illustrations are either memorable or famous or both! I feel as though I have seen half of them elsewhere in various histories in tribute to Barlow. There are some curious features of the book. The consistency of the paper is different on different pages. The illustrations (including the English verse) are clearly imprinted onto the paper in a separate operation from the printing of the prose texts, and the two do not always align well with each other. There are some problems, as could only have been expected in bringing together many different elements. Thus on 99 the illustration is of the ant and fly. It is labeled "Ant and Grasshopper." On 143 there is a picture of a man and cat; the title is "The Nurse and her Child," already used correctly on 139. Is "The Old Lyon" (199) a repeat picture? There is a bit lacking on the book's last page; there are some repeated tears (e.g., on 132); and there is some water damage. But what a glorious book! "Even more than Gheeraerts, Barlow 'in turning fable illustrations from humorous pantomime or stylized morality plays into often moving domestic drama' (Hodnett 1979) achieved 'a sense of credibility that is the mark of distinguished illustration" (Hobbs, 62). Besides Stephen Zabriski, this book has belonged to Charles Butler; Edward Cheney; and John Griffith and Justice Edwards.

1667 Phaedri Augusti Caesaris liberti, Fabularum Aesopiarum libri quinque, notis perpetuis illustrati et cum integris aliorum observationibus in lucem editi a Joanne Laurentio.  Laurentius.  Christian Hagens (frontispiece).  First edition; boxed.  Hardbound.  Johannes Janssonius van Waesberrge - Witwe des Elizei Weyerstraet.  $360 from Oak Knoll Books, New Castle, Delaware, Oct., '20.

Oak Knoll Books was running a 20% off sale, and I could not resist adding this early first edition to the collection.  The collection has had an early descendant of this Laurentius 1667 edition, printed perhaps in 1750 and bought in June, '98, at a Great Russell Book Fair in London.  With this copy, we have a title-page and the glorious frontispiece featuring a Roman Emperor, Phaedrus, and Aesop.  Bodemann #75.1 notes the number of dedications that open the book.  They are followed by an AI.  The illustrations for each fable are uniformly just over 3½" by 2¾".  According to Bodemann, they have few known sources.  They tend to portray several phases of a fable at once; for example, on 43 we see in the foreground the stag admiring his image in the water.  Further back and to the right, we see the dogs catching the stag as the hunter stands by.  Similarly, we see both phases of FS on 78.  The illustrations are strong and well preserved.  They were printed in a separate phase from the texts, as is clear for example on 25, where the illustration overlaps the bottom of the title.  I seem to remember many of the images from various sources, like the dramatic pose of the Aesop statue on 128.  Page 194 has a second illustration pasted in over the original illustration for III 12, "Pullus ad Margaritam."  The same on 205 for "Canis ad Agnum," III 15.  Several fables, like V 2, seem to have some lines expurgated and replaced with asterisks.  I am unsure why.  The fables are followed by significant sections of "Variae Lectiones," "Notae Guyeti," "Vocabulorum," and an "Index Rerum et Verborum." The final page has a list of errata.  Beautiful leather binding and matching box.

1667/1750? Phaedri Augusti Caesaris liberti, Fabularum Aesopiarum libri quinque, notis perpetuis illustrati et cum integris aliorum observationibus (Rigaltii, Rittershusii, Schoppii, Meursii, Fabri, Schefferi) in lucem editi a Joanne Laurentio. Laurentius. Illustrated by Christian Hagens, NA. Hardbound. Amsterdam?: Jansson Westberg and Vidua Elzaeus Weyerstraet? £75 from T.F.S. Scott, at a Great Russell Book Fair in London, June, '98.

This exquisite book lacks a title page and 177/78. Besides, 179 is misprinted as 197. It remains for me an exquisite mystery book. If it were not for the fact that it seems to end on 400, I would think that it is either a copy or a descendant of Laurentius' 1667 edition, because the illustrations match so exactly those given by Bodemann in Fabula Docet (19 and 144). The Laurentius edition is Bodemann's #68 in Fabula Docet and #75.1 in Das Fabelbuch. I can find no mention of reproductions of Hagens' work in Carnes or Bodemann. Here is work for a researcher more skilled than I! In the meantime, it is a lovely little book, very well preserved and nicely bound.

1668 Fables choisies, mises en vers par M. de la Fontaine. Illustrations by Francois Chauveau. Hardbound. First edition. Paris: Denys Thierry. $369 from Lorne Scharf, Hampstead, Quebec, through eBay, Sept., '03.

I never thought that I would be able to place a copy of La Fontaine first edition of 1668 into the collection. Whoopee! The edition includes the first six books of La Fontaine's fables. There is an AI at the front, along with the dedicatory letter to "Monsieur le Dauphin" and a life of Aesop. Each fable (except the second of double-fables and the last two) receives a small (2.5" x 2" ) illustration. In the past, I have criticized Chauveau's illustrations. Here I find more to praise. First, do not miss the very nice hand-colored "Les deux Taureaux & une Grenouille" (II 4). (I also notice some coloring in OF, I 3). Some of the illustrations show more force and drama than others, like "Lex deux Mulets" (I 4). I have already praised I 14 (the palace crumbles), III 1 (MSA), and V 12 (Les Medecins). I still think that the illustration for II 13 may miss the point; the star-specialist here is looking at something in his hand. III 14 shows difficulty in depicting a lion's head. A previous owner has made a list of missing items on the blank pre-title-page. One page of the T of C is missing (roughly from "H" to "O"). First first leaf of "La vie d'Ésope" is not here. Pages 215-218 are not here (V 10 and V 11). Pages 58, 252, 258, and 260 have been restored. Pages 265 and 267 are missing small but important portions--important in that they belong to illustrations. Finally, 280-281 is missing. This book is a treasure!

1668 The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse, 2 vols in one..  John Ogilby.  Illustrated by Wenceslaus Hollar.  Second Edition.  Hardbound.  London: Thomas Roycroft.  Gift of Creighton Archives, Jan., '19.

Ogilby here sets a new standard by improving on his 1651 edition with a folio edition, a size and type of book, I believe, not previously published in England.  This book, about 16" x 10", offers two new enhancements.  First, the art work was done now largely by Wenceslaus Hollar, often basing his engravings on the simpler etchings of Cleyn from 1651.  Critics rave about the achievement of Hollar, one of the standout artists in the history of fable illustration.  The second enhancement is that Ogilby himself creates a set of marginalia commenting and expanding on the various references already embedded in the stories.  Latin and Greek sources and mythological cross-references lift Aesop into an even higher level of respectability.  Performance art has gone one step further as a learned, curious man invites cultured readers into the realms of ancient story and mythology.  Some of the fascination in reading this book is surely the pleasure of listening to a learned man in action.

1668/1930  Fables choisies, mises en vers par M. de la Fontaine. Illustrated by FranH ois Chauveau. #185 of 600 facsimiles. Original: Paris: Denys Thierry. Facsimile: Paris: Firmin-Didot. $24 at Crescent City Books, New Orleans, August, ’96.

A prize and a surprise. Here is a fine facsimile of the first six books that La Fontaine published together in 1668. Two pages of notes at the conclusion name the differences from the authorized version of 1678 and 1679. There is an AI at the front, along with the dedication, preface, and life of Aesop. Each fable (except the second of double-fables and the last two) receives a small (2.5" x 2") illustration. Perhaps I expected too much from such a classic, but they are disappointing: small, uninspired, derivative, and stylized. The best of them might be I 14 (the palace crumbles), III 1 (MSA), and V 12 (Les Medecins). Both text and illustration are strong in VI 8 ("Le Vieillard & l’Asne"); I think the real point here is that any master is our enemy. The illustration for II 13 may miss the point; the star-specialist here is looking at something in his hand. III 14 shows difficulty in depicting a lion’s head. There seem to be horizontal and vertical lines across the engravings; are these in the original or the facsimile? I cut the pages of this book. I find it a frail treasure!

1668/1965 The Fables of Aesop Paraphras'd in Verse. John Ogilby. Illustrations especially by Wenceslaus Hollar, also by Stoop and perhaps by Francis Barlow. Introduction by Earl Miner. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library: UCLA. $8 from the publisher, 1985. Extra copy for $6.38 at Murphy-Brookfield Books, Iowa City, April, '93.

The versions here are longish and filled with topical references. The illustrations are quite faint. Several put another fable's picture in the background. The best illustrations for me might be "The Head and the Members" [with a great belly-face] and FS.

1669 Les Fables d Esope Phrygien. Illustrées de Discours Moraux, Philosophiques, et Politiques. Nouvelle édition.  Jean Baudoin.  Pieter van der Borcht.  Hardbound.  Brussels: François Foppens.  400 Swiss Francs from Peter Bichsel Fine Books, Zurich, June, ‘21.  

I was particularly attracted to this book for a long time, especially because we do not otherwise have any work of Pieter van der Borcht.  I also have had my eye out for anything done by Baudoin.  As Peter Bichsel writes, this is a collection of 117 Aesopian fables compiled by the French scholar Jean Baudoin with his life of Aesop.  Baudoin s collection was first published in 1631 in Paris. The Brussels editions like this contain a different series of illustrations from the earlier Paris editions.  Borcht, who worked for the famous Plantin printers in Antwerp here presents an engraved frontispiece and 147 vignettes in the text, each about 2” x 1½”.  The frontispiece shows that great court scene I have admired so much in Sadeler.  Is that Aesop delighting the children and looking out over all the animals?  The beginning life of Aesop features an illustration for each of its 30 chapters.  Pagination simply begins over again with the fables.  Typical fable illustrations are WL (4) and OF (119).  Well executed!  One finds on 329 a remarkably graphic depiction of “The Greedy Man and the Envious.”  Each fable is followed by a lengthy “Discours Moral,” foreshadowing what Croxall would do in English some 50 years later.  Bodemann does not have this edition, but her #67.3 is a later Brussels Foppens edition from 1682.  The earlier Paris editions to which Bichsel refers include Bodemann's #67.1 from 1649 and #67.2 of 1659.  3¾" x 6¼".

1673 Phaedri Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinque. Cum adnotationibus Joannis Schefferi Argentoratensis et Francisci Guyeti. Notis Nunquam antea publicatis. Editio Tertia Prioribus Emendatior & Auctior in qua iungitur interpretatio Gallica cum notis, & Index Latinus uberrimus. Hamburg: Gothofred Schultzen and Amsterdam: Joannes Janssonium a Waesberge. $15 at Goodspeed's, Jan., '89.

There is a nice French translation immediately after the text of each fable. Copious notes. Guyeti's additional notes begin on 248. They are in French and seem to include some Greek. A steal for the price!

1675 Aesopicks or a Second Collection of Fables Paraphras'd in Verse, Adorned with Sculpture, and Illustrated with Annotations. By John Ogilby. Illustrated by Wenceslaus Hollar?, Francis Barlow?, and Joshua English?. Third edition. London: Printed for T. Basset, R. Clavel, and R. Chiswel at the George in Fleetstreet, at the Peacock, and the Rose and Crown in St. Paul's Church-yard. $130 from June Clinton, April, '98.

Bodemann #76.1 is the first edition of this work. I take it that the first edition was a large-format work. I suspect that the annotations there were done in the margin. Here "Androcleus" and "The Ephesian Matron" are the two last texts, following fifty fables and finishing on 267. A T of C follows next, and then the annotations are separately paginated on 32 pages. I will be curious to compare the full-page illustrations here someday with those in the first edition. I presume that these are copies by another hand. My favorites among them are: "Of the Swan and the Stork" (#5), "Of the Crab and her Mother" (#9), DW (#43), "Of the Fox and the Eagle" (#46), and "Of the Panther and Rusticks" (#49). The best images for "Androcleus" may be the human images facing 213 and 217, and for "The Ephesian Matron" the human image facing 229. The illustration for FC (#8) seems to be missing. Not every fable receives an illustration; several pairs or sets of three seem to use the same illustration (e.g., #24-26 and #27-28, respectively). Some fables (like #36) may simply be missing their illustration. The book is in good condition--especially when compared with my copy of the first edition!

1677/1982 Labyrinte de Versailles 1677. Présenté par Charles Perrault. Avec des gravures de Sébastian Le Clerc. Postface de Michel Conan. Hardbound. Paris: Le Temps des jardins: Editions du Moniteur. €30 from Michel Besombes, Le Marché George Brassens, Paris, July, '12.

This is perhaps the sixth book I have found presenting the Labyrinthe at Versailles. I continue to be fascinated and somewhat confused by the subject. My confusion here arises from a book I just catalogued: Contes et Fables: Texte Integral, a contemporary work including what seem to be Perrault's labyrinth fables. Each of these includes a prose summary and a verse moral, which is almost always amatory in character. Now I go back to this facsimile of Perrault's 1677 work and find the prose summaries, separate from the illustrations, but I find none of the verse morals about love. There is a verse moral with each fable here, but it seems different and not focussed particularly on love. In the early part of this book, the prose rendition of each fable is followed by a description of the fountain scene presented in the Labyrinth. The rendering of LeClerc's plates is adequate. The Labyrinth, the back cover tells us, was destroyed in 1774. The postface by Michel Conan includes nine illustrations, listed just after the postface.

1678/2010 Fables d'Esope en Quatraines dont Il y en a une Partie au Labyrinthe de Versailles. (Isaac) Benserade. Illustrations by Pierre le Sueur I. Paperbound. Paris/La Vergne, TN: Sebastien Mabre-Cramoisy/Kessinger Publishing. AU$32.49 from The Nile Publishing Company, Australia, Sept., '10.

One learns from Wikipedia that André Le Nôtre initially planned a maze of unadorned paths in 1665, but in 1669, Charles Perrault advised Louis XIV to include thirty-nine hydraulic fountains each representing one of the fables of Aesop. The work was carried out between 1672 and 1677. In 1675 the poet Isaac de Benserade provided the quatrains accompanying each fountain. Here Benserade adds enough fable quatrains to make a total of 221, the additional ones following the pattern he had set with the 1675 fountain quatrains. A number of the quatrains here are marked "Versailles"; apparently those are the very ones used in the labyrinth. The publisher of this original book is the same that published Perrault's book on the labyrinth a year earlier. Though this copy, like most on-demand reprints, suffers from inexact xeroxing, the cameos are surprisingly detailed and quite pleasing. Take as a sample Fable LXXII on 73. The quatrain is simple and clear. The cameo presents the characters, a serpent and a hedgehog, clearly and has them face each other, as they may well have done during their spirited dialog! As Metzner notes in his Bodemann description, the quatrain often serves as a title for the cameo. I have three books from the labyrinth tradition: Labyrinte de Versailles (1683?) by Perrault, with Sébastian Le Clerc as illustrator and Nicolaus Visscher as publisher; Labyrinte de Versailles (1690?) by Johann Ulrich Krauss, reproduced in a contemporary version by Helmut Eisendle; and Aesop at Court (1768) by Bellamy, with Bickham as an illustrator and W. Faden as publisher.

1682 Mythologia Aesopica, in qua, Aesopi Fabulae Graeco-Latinae CCXCVII. Accedunt Babriae Fabulae etiam auctiores.  Isaac Nicolaus Nevelet.  Third edition.  Hardbound.  London: M. Clarke.  $250 from Michael Pyron, Conshohocken, PA, Feb., '25.

I rejoiced a year and a half ago to bring a second edition Nevelet from 1660 into the collection (Bodemann #60.2) and then recently added his first from 1610(Bodemann #60.1).  Now here is a third edition, "Secundum Editionem Isaacii Nicolai Niveleti."  The title-page adds "Praeponitur Historia Vitae, Morum, Fortunae, & Interitus Aesopi.  Composita studio Joachimi Camerarii: Et adjicitur Cebetis Tabula.  In Usum Scholae Aetonensis."  The book reorganizes Nevelet's work and presents it without the excellent illustrations of or after Solis.  There are three segments, each separately paginated.  After the title-page, there is the Latin vita on 1-66.  There follow Greek fables on 1-127, including 149 from Aesop; 40 from Aphthonius; 43 from Gabrius; 11 from Babrius; and Cebes' "Tabula."  The third section offers on 132 pages Latin translations, numbered according to the Greek texts of the second section.  The anonymus Neveleti fables from the first two editions are not here.  I would say that this is a dense schoolbook!  As not illustrated it is not in Bodemann.  3½" x 6".

1683? Labyrinte de Versailles. Isaac de Benserade; Charles Perrault. Sébastian Le Clerc? Second edition? Hardbound. Amsterdam: Nicolaus Visscher. €2200 from Librairie de l'Avenue, St. Ouen , Paris, June, '09.

Finding this book was a terrific surprise! Laurence Veyrier had shown me a number of fable books. As I finished, she mentioned offhand that I probably would not be interested in the Versailles labyrinth. I have looked for it for years! At last I had it in my hand. I breathed deeply and considered my policy that I should buy any book that I have not had in my hand before. We negotiated and I finally agreed to have the book sent to me in Heidelberg, so that I would carry it back to the USA. (A box of books from Germany had been lost in the mail a year before.) I love the book! There are several clues to its structure. First, the text sections are all in fours to accommodate the four languages. The title-page thus has four titles. After what look like two "imprimi potest" statements in Dutch, there are four addresses to the "Courteous Reader." After four descriptions of the labyrinth, quartets of fable texts plus fountain explanations follow, both in prose. Pagination of this section ends on 82. Four "explanations of the platform" follow, an enumerated list of fables. New pagination then marks the illustration section. Two beginning illustrations show the labyrinth's plan and the two statues -- Aesop and Cupid -- at its entrance. Then follow thirty-nine engravings of the fountains. On the left facing each illustration is Benserade's quatrain and a poetic rendering into quatrains in the other three languages. The key to understanding the artistry of the fountains is, I believe, that the water is the animals' speech. They frequently spew forth in competition with each other. The pattern is at its simplest in Fable III, UP. Cock spews back a lie for the fox's lie. That the stream of water is speech-as-attack seems to me clear in Fable XXI, WC, where only the wolf spews water. The same effect is at work in "The Fox and the Goat" (XXIV), where the goat is in the water and not spewing it, while the fox pours insults onto him. Of course a well is a perfect setting for a part of a fountain! Stories that are new to me include "The Cock and the Turkey-cock" (Fable VIII) and "The Parrot and the Ape" (XVII). I had mentioned the latter in my comment on the reprint version of this book done by Helmut Eisendle in 1975. The mother monkey squeezes her son to death in Fable XI; might the water be pressured out of him by her embrace? Favorites of mine include Fable XII, a domed enclosure in which the birds and beasts fight it out with their water streams; Fable XXII, the kite's party in which the guests learn that they are the meal; Fable XXVI, in which the frogs are stupidly spewing forth their desires about kingship; and Fable XXXVIII, "The Serpent and the Porcupine," where torrents of water represent the porcupine's quills. Fountains XIII and XIV are the two phases of FS, beautifully done. Fable XIX has the frog carrying the mouse on his back in the water. I have trouble finding that a good version of this story. It may be a sample of what had become of some fables in the tradition: the principal twist of the story is lost, and good artists are working with inferior stories. Bodemann #79 mentions four editions in a LeClerc tradition: 1677 in Paris, 1679 in Paris (first and second editions by Mabre-Cramoisy); about 1700 by Krauss in Augsburg (the edition used by Eisendle); and 1768 in London with plates by Bickham. Hobbs describes the Visscher edition (60) and seems confident that the illustrations are from LeClerc. Veyrier calls this a second edition. A pencilled date is either 1682 (Visscher's first edition) or -- more likely -- 1683.

1686 Ad Iambum Ut Carolum Pererium V. Cl. admoneat Fabulam iamdudum promissam in lucem edere. Carolus Pererius, Joannes Comirius. Paperbound. Paris: Andreae Cramoisy. €5 from Antiquariat Müller & Gräff, Stuttgart, August, '09.

Here is a strange little eight-page pamphlet that seems to be a dialogue between two fabulists, Carolus Pererius and Joannes Comirius, S.J. At first there is an introduction and then a fable, "Mus, Feles, & Muscipula," that is, "The Mouse, the Cat, and the Mousetrap." Pererius responds in an iamb, which is followed by an address to Comirius, followed by another fable, "Leo Aeger, Vulpes & Lupus," that is, "The Sick Lion, the Fox, and the Wolf." Burrowing into the medieval Latin verse here will have to wait for another day! 

1689 Fables d'Esope, avec les Figures de Sadeler.  Pierre du Fresne.  Illustrations after (Aegidius) Sadeler.   Traduction Nouvelle.  Hardbound. Paris: Pierre Auboyn, Pierre Emery, & Charles Clouzier.  $1500 from Scott Schilb, April, '18.

Here is the French translation of the original German "Theatrum Morum" of 1608, published by Paul Sesse in Prag.  The illustrations, however lovely, are done "after" Sadeler, not by him.  After a signed frontispiece offering humans on an upper tier and animals on a lower tier, there are 139 prose fables, each with a rectangular illustration covering about half of the right-hand page with a "sens moral," while the text takes up the left-hand page.  There are some unfortunate brown stains on this lovely old book's pages.  Apparently Sadeler follows in the tradition of de Dene.  In any case, these are wonderfully active and detailed illustrations!  279 pages.  This book has clearly been around for a while!  My prizes among the illustrations go to "The Thief and the Dog" (41); "The Ass and the Lapdog" (103); WLS (131); and "The Bull and the Calf" (135).

1692 Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. First edition. London: R. Sare, T. Sawbridge, B. Took, M. Gillyflower, A. & J. Churchil, and J. Hindmarsh. $465 from Emil Reimer, Steinbach, MB, Canada, through Ebay, Nov., '00.

Bodemann #86.1. Included are these elements: Frontispiece, Title-Page, Preface, Aesop Engraving, Life of Aesop in eighteen chapters (with pages in Arabic numerals 1-28), AI, Errata, and (starting on a new Arabic "1") five hundred numbered fables without illustration finishing on 480. Bodemann offers a division of the fables: Aesop (1-201), Barlandus, etc. [from Aesopus Dorpii] (202-214), Anianus, etc. (215-252), Abstemius, etc. (253-351), Poggius (352-373), Miscellany fables [= Fables in the Common School-Book] (374-383), Supplement [of more recent authors] (384-500). The frontispiece portrait of L'Estrange is by G. Kneller. Facing the "Life of Aesop" is a full-page engraving of Aesop among the animals and birds. Bodemann seems to speak of 132 text-illustrations, but there are none here. Do I understand correctly that they were appended as a group after the fables? I do not think I have yet seen an illustrated edition of L'Estrange. There is some water damage perceptible on many pages, especially early in the book. The bottom of the outer spine is worn away. Internally the book seems sound. Signed "Charles Wright 1692" on cover page. Ex Libris "Scott Chad." This is the year during which I have seen to digitizing L'Estrange's 500 fable texts. I am delighted to have found this book at just the right time!

1694 Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions.  By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt..  Second edition.  Hardbound.  London:  R. Sare, T. Sawbridge, B. Took, M. Gillyflower, A. & J. Churchil, J. Hindmarsh, and G. Sawbridge.  $165 from Thomas J. Joyce and Company, Chicago, May, '19.

Here is a venerable old second edition to complement our first (1692) and third (1699).  Included are these elements: frontispiece portrait of L'Estrange (detached), Aesop engraving (plus blank verso), title-page (plus blank verso), Life of Aesop in nineteen chapters (with pages in Arabic numerals 1-28), Preface (8 pages), AI (7 pages and a blank), and (starting on a new Arabic "1") five hundred numbered fables without illustration finishing on 476.  Also on 476 are both "Fables omitted in the table" and "errata's" (sic).  Bodemann's account of the first edition (#86.1) offers a division of the fables that holds true here: Aesop (1-201), Barlandus, etc. [from Aesopus Dorpii] (202-214, beginning on page 181), Anianus, etc. (215-252, beginning on page 195), Abstemius, etc. (253-351, beginning on page 217), Poggius (352-373, beginning on page 317), Miscellany fables [= Fables in the Common School-Book] (374-383, beginning on page 342), Supplement [of more recent authors] (384-500, beginning on page 352).  Each of these sections begins with a fresh title-page.  Somehow this edition ends up being four pages shorter than the first edition.  Tom got this book for me from Hindman Auctions in Chicago.  Their price was $150.  I will enclose their invoice.  How nice of Tom to think of me!

1693 Esope en Belle Humeur.  Aesop.  Hardbound.  Brussels: Chez François Foppens.  $599 from Scott Schilb, Columbia, MO, August, '15.

The title continues ""Ou Derniere Traduction et Augmentation de ses Fables, en Prose, et en Vers."  As Bodemann notes, there are 157 fables on 360 pages, followed by an AI.  A strong frontispiece starts the book facing the inside front cover: a capped Aesop, carrying an object, walks through a pastoral scene surrounded by animals and perhaps a child.  The title-page is followed by a ten page envoy "Esope au Lecteur."  This Aesop promises the reader "une plaisante affaire," especially because he is in good humor.  The illustration at the start of the two-page life of Aesop is especially lively: Aesop dances while monkeys play music (15).  That pagination makes clear, I believe, that the printer has been counting pages from the very first page.  The illustrations, about 2" by 1½", are strong and well defined.  Among the strongest are "The Eagle and the Fox" (26); "The Stag Caught by His Antlers" (55); "The Horse and the Stag" (109); "The Dog and the Ass" (122); "An Old Dog and His Master" (179); TMCM (199); TB (208); "Two Lobsters" (258); OR (265); 2W (287); 2P (297); "The Greedy and the Envious" (302); and "The Eagle and the Crow" (347).  It seems to me that I have seen this book's illustration for GA (233) before.  La Fontaine's GA appears without illustration in its original form on 244 and is soon followed by a number of other La Fontaine texts, usually without illustration.  Other fables too, like "The Charlatan" (194) and "L'Alouette et ses Petits" (224) lack illustrations.  This book is another star in this collection!  About 6" x 3½".  Formerly owned by Denis du Peage.

1698 Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum. Libri V. Cum integris commentariis Marq. Gudii, Conr. Rittershusii. Nic. Rigaltii, Nic Heinsii, Joan. Schefferi, Jo. Lud. Praschii, & excerptis aliorum. Curante Petro Burmanno. Curante Petro Burmanno (Peter Burman). Frontispiece drawn by Tiedemann, engraved by Joseph Mulder. Hardbound. Amsterdam (Amstelaedami): Heinrich Wetstein (apud Henricum Wetstenium). $299.99 from The Holy Graal, Edmonton, Canada, through ebay, Nov., '11.

I had been looking for some time for a second full copy of Peter Burman's famous commentary on Phaedrus, reproduced so many times in so many different ways. I had previously found a 1745 Luchtmans edition from Leiden. I noticed this copy on eBay and went for it. It turns out that this is the editio princeps of Burman! Bodemann #90.1 and Carnes #94. Carnes writes "The first Pieter Burman (1668-1741) edition of Phaedrus, which is to become generally the standard Phaedrus for the next century, and (through second and third) generation editions, well into the nineteenth century. This popularity results in a pedigree almost impossible to follow. Burman's edition will be the foundation for many other editions, all through Europe and North and South America, some of which will credit Burman, though most do not. Burman himself will see three editions through the press, together with a shorter school version. The 1698 edition contains the first edition of the transcription of the R manuscript. Contains also commentaries by Marquard Gude (1635-1689), Konrad Rittershausen (1560-1613), Nicolas Rigault (1577-1654), Nicolaus Heinsius (1620-1681), Johannes Scheffer (1621-1679), and Johann Ludwig Prasch (1637-1690)." Bodemann is more exact in recording the unusual pagination as one moves from introduction to texts to index to commentaries to an index on the commentaries: [54], 312, [58], 203-462, [58]. I cannot find the promised contribution of Heinsius here. Scheffer and Prasch have praefationes early in the book.

1699 Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. The Third Edition Corrected and Amended. London: R. Sare, B. Took, M. Gillyflower, A. & J. Churchil, G. Sawbridge, and H. Hindmarsh. £40 from June Clinton, May, '96.

Bodemann does not seem to have a separate listing for other than the 1692 first edition of L'Estrange's work. The second edition was in 1694. Here is the third. By a random sampling, I conclude that the entire work has been newly typeset. This copy lacks the frontispiece portrait of La Fontaine; it also does not have the preface or the portrait of Aesop that faced the "Life of Aesop" in my first edition. There is no longer a list of errata facing the first fable; presumably they have all been corrected! There are 476 pages, whereas the first edition had 480. The title-page print area is crowded into the upper left corner of the page. Two names among the publishers have changed their initial; they had been T. Sawbridge and J. Hindmarsh. I have put down the price that June Clinton charged me for this book, but that is a joke. It should be listed simply as a gift--because that is what it is. My understanding is that one of L'Estrange's major contributions to the history of fable publishing is the addition of the "Reflexion" to the moral. We will pay dearly for this innovation in reading L'Estrange's political and religious adversary, Croxall! The reflections include undisguised social and political commentary with more than a hint of Jacobitism.

1699/1910? Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. The Third Edition Corrected and Amended. London: R. Sare, B. Took, M. Gillyflower, A. & J. Churchil, G. Sawbridge, and H. Hindmarsh; Reprinted and Published by W.H. Allen and Co. $50 from an unknown source, July, '98.

One of two different copies I have of this reprint, originating from different publishers. The surprising thing is that I have a third edition of L'Estrange, and neither of these books is an exact reproduction of it. The typesetting is new. Did the reproducers set the type for a whole new edition? The order of elements in this volume is this: Frontispiece, Title-Page [with the misprinted date of 1669], acknowledgement of the reprinter, AI, blank, Life of Aesop (1-30), Preface, and the 500 Fables (1-476). This edition has gilt page-edges all the way around, a green cloth cover, and a gold-on-red label "Aesop's Fables" on the spine. Good condition.

1699/1910? Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. The Third Edition Corrected and Amended. London: R. Sare, B. Took, M. Gillyflower, A. & J. Churchil, G. Sawbridge, and H. Hindmarsh; Reprinted and Published by John Gray and Co. $85 from Chanticleer, Sonoma, July, '00.

Here is the fancier reprint of l'Estrange's third edition from 1699. As far as I can ascertain, it is--except for one difference--exactly identical internally with the edition by W.H.Allen and Company, which I have listed under the same date. As I mention there, the surprising thing is that I have a third edition of L'Estrange, and neither of these books is an exact reproduction of it. The typesetting is new. Did the reproducers set the type for a whole new edition? The beginning order of elements in this volume is this: Frontispiece, Title-Page [with the misprinted date of 1669], acknowledgement of the reprinter, AI, blank, Life of Aesop (1-30), and Preface. Then there appears here, facing the last page of the preface, the full-page engraving of Aesop among the animals. That engraving does not appear in my copy of the Allen reproduction. The engraving's blank back faces the first of the 500 numbered fables, which again run from 1 to 476. Full leather. The front cover is separated. Marbled inside covers and endpapers. The spine has in gold on red "Fables, of Aesop &c. L'Estrange." At the spine's bottom is "1669."

 

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1700 - 1924

1700 Fables Choisies de M. de La Fontaine.  Henrik Cause, after Chauveau.  Hardbound.  The Hague: Chez Henry van Bulderen.  $69 from Sand Lake Farm, through eBay, Feb., '16.

This book becomes one of the stars of the collection!  Bodemann #77 describes a family of editions that starts with Denys Thierry's 1668 publication of La Fontaine's first six books of fables, illustrated by Chauveau (Bodemann #77.1).  The first "Gesamtausgabe" of the twelve books was published between 1669 and 1694 in five "volumes," each of which contained one to three "books" of La Fontaine's fables (Bodemann #77.3).  Were these five, published by different publishers over twenty-five years, bound together to make one volume?  Volume I contained La Fontaine's first three books, and Volume II the next three books.  Life gets trickier with Volume III: it contained what we know as Books 7 and 8 of La Fontaine's fables, but they were called "Books I and II" and their pages were freshly paginated.  Volume IV contained what we know as Books 9-11 but called them "Books III to V."  Volume V contained what we know as Book 12 but called it, mistakenly, "Book VII."  Bodemann correctly notes "richtig VI."  Henrik von Bulderen published the next version of this book in 1688 (Volumes I through IV) and 1694 (Volume V): Bodemann #77.4.  He republished it in 1700 (Bodemann #77.8).  This volume continues the unusual numbering of books and the mistaken numbering of the final volume.  My understanding is that Henrik Cause is the engraver and he models these engravings after the drawings of Chauveau.  Bodemann describes the title-page picture in terms of a satyr pointing to the pictorialized character of fable.  In fact, the illustrations are very well preserved here.  The book itself is not well preserved.  Both front and back cover boards are separated.  270 pages plus 346 pages, separately paginated.  Bodemann says of #77.3 that it contains 235 illustrations.  The illustrations are surprisingly large: 2¾" x about 3".  Some foxing.

1701   Phaedri, Aug. Liberti Fabularum Æsopiarum Libri V. Notis illustravit in usum Serenissimi Principis Nassavii David Hoogstratanus (David Hoogstraten). (Medallion engravings by Jan van Vianen). Amstelædami: Ex typographia Francisci Halmae (François Halma). $525 from Michael Hirschfeld, April, '95.

One of the jewels of this collection. I am so delighted to have found this book! Hobbs describes it accurately when she uses its fifth plate to open her little essay "Five Hundred Years of Illustration and Text." There are eighteen such plates with six medallions apiece, and they are wonderful! That fifth plate and the twelfth (92) are particularly beautiful; among the best individual illustrations are I.IX (the sparrow and the hare), I.XII (the deer admiring its horns), II.II (2W), II.VI (the eagle, the turtle, and the crow), III.X (the wife-suspecting man who kills his son in bed), IV.XXIV (Simonides saved from an earthquake), and V.IX (the bull in the doorway). Individual medallions do an excellent job of portraying in several planes the several phases of a given story or both the fable and its exemplification in life. Even the initials are beautiful, particularly that for the prologue to Book I. There are other designs, some repeated, throughout the book, particularly involving Bacchanalia. The folded-in portrait of the Prince of Nassau is torn and repaired. Book IV is off twice in relation to Perry's numbering, since Perry 4.1 and 4.13 are missing. Thus Hoogstraten 4.1-11 are Perry's 4.2-12, and Hoogstraten's 4.12-24 are Perry's 4.14-26. Hoogstraten's 4.13 does not have the usual Latin title in the circle around the medallion; this image (of a woman with a bird seated on a crocodile) seems to have nothing to do with the fable's subject of a woman's tongue and private parts. There is an appendix of five fables from "Marquardo Gudio," the illustrations for the fourth and fifth of which are misnumbered. Hobbs mentions "moral indexing" that I cannot find here. I do find an AI of Latin titles just before the fables begin and, at the end, indices (1) of all vocables and (2) of items in the notes worthy of observance. Hoogstraten was a classics scholar. Some pages (e.g., 57 and 157) have a square cut out of the lower outside corner. Is the ribbon as old as the book? Michael mentioned that he had had the book rebound in Europe.

1703 Aesop's Fables in English & Latin, Interlineary, for the Benefit of those who not having a Master, Wold Learn Either of these Tongues. (John Locke). Hardbound. London: A.and J. Churchil. $1592.95 from Owl Books, Leitrim, Ireland, Dec., '09.

There are 337 pages for two-hundred-and-thirty fables. I think I laughed at Locke's project when I first read of it. It makes more sense to me now. He is trying to help people who cannot get to school to learn Latin, and he wisely conjectures that his book can also help those who already know Latin but need to learn English. He admits in his preface that the English here will not be stellar. But it will clearly reflect the Latin. The printer does a good job of varying the typeface, so that a reader can easily see which Latin and English words correspond to each other. While I am still not a fan of this method of learning, I admire the project and the practical working of Locke's mind to offer a method for learning Latin. The title-page promises sculptures but they are not here. As I recall, they are not so much fable illustrations as animal illustrations, perhaps meant for the young who may not yet have experienced some of the various animals mentioned here. There is a page of errata just before the beginning AI. Bodemann mentions the five pages of illustrations, with sixteen pictures each of individual animals. I had forgotten that Locke's name is not mentioned in the book and was frustrated at first when searching for the book in Bodemann under Locke's name. This is apparently the first edition (1703) without pictures. I wonder why no one has ever reprinted this book.

1703/2010 Aesop's Fables in English & Latin, Interlineary, for the Benefit of those who not having a Master, Would Learn Either of these Tongues. (John Locke). Paperbound. London/LaVergne, TN: A.and J. Churchil/Kessinger Publishing. AU$39.49 from The Nile, Australia, through eBay and Premier Books, Roseburg, OR, Sept., '10.

I closed my remark on my original copy of this book with this comment: "I wonder why no one has ever reprinted this book." Here is my answer. This copy, manufactured at request, provides a good supplement to the original edition. First of all, it contains the illustrations that are missing in that copy. Secondly, it provides a book that can be used without harming that fragile copy over 300 years old. I am slightly confused over buying a book from an Australian firm on eBay, having it printed in Tennessee, and shipped to me by a bookdealer in Oregon! Let me include some comments from the original copy. There are 337 pages for two-hundred-and-thirty fables. I think I laughed at Locke's project when I first read of it. It makes more sense to me now. He is trying to help people who cannot get to school to learn Latin, and he wisely conjectures that his book can also help those who already know Latin but need to learn English. He admits in his preface that the English here will not be stellar. But it will clearly reflect the Latin. The printer does a good job of varying the typeface, so that a reader can easily see which Latin and English words correspond to each other. While I am still not a fan of this method of learning, I admire the project and the practical working of Locke's mind to offer a method for learning Latin. There is a page of errata just before the beginning AI. I had forgotten that Locke's name is not mentioned in the book and was frustrated at first when searching for the book in Bodemann under Locke's name.

1704/1966 Aesop Dress'd or a Collection of Fables Writ in Familiar Verse. Bernard Mandeville. Introduction by John S. Shea. No illustrations. Original: London: Lock's-Head. Reprint: Los Angeles: The Augustan Reprint Society Publication Number 120: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. $6.50 at the Book House on Grand, St. Paul, Nov., '94. Extra for $1.90 at Bargain Bookstore, San Diego, Aug., '93.

Thirty-eight fables, almost all from LaFontaine, done in couplets apparently based on the rhythms of Samuel Butler. They move along swiftly enough. LaFontaine is clearly behind this work. I first found this pamphlet thinking that I had one at home. In fact all I had was a xerox for $15 from the publisher because the work had been sold out! I would rather be lucky than good!

1706 Novus Candidatus Rhetoricae. Hardbound. Lyon: Antonius Molin. $79 from Don Nash, Plymouth, MA, Oct., '04. 

The fuller title includes the following: "Altero se candidior comptiorque, non Aphthonii solum Progymnasmata ornatius concinnata; sed Tullianæ etiam Rhetoricæ Præcepta clarius explicata repræsentans Studiosis Eloquentiæ Candidatis. Accessit nunc primùm Dissertatio de Panegyrico, Auctore P. Francisco Pomey, e Societate Jesu." This book seems to represent an updating and amplification of the Candidatus Rhetoricae of which I have a copy from perhaps 1645. It seems to lack the Greek that one could find in the earlier book. As I wrote there, the book seems to be a Jesuit collegium text in rhetoric following the Progymnasmata of Aphthonius. If one works from the back of the book, there is still present an apparently independent 48-page work, Angelus Pacis by Nicolas Caussini (Latinized name), S.J. The title-page for this is exactly the same as the title-page for the whole present work, with only the bottom few lines changed to indicate not Antonius Molin in Lyon in 1706 but Wilhem Friessem and and Joannes Everardus Fromart in Cologne in 1706. The next element includes two statements of royal privilege. Previous to that, after 418, is first a T of C titled "Index Titulorum" and then an AI titled "Index Rerum." The newly expanded and attributed Pars III is Franciscus Pomey's Dissertation on the Panegyric covering 343-418; in the earlier edition it had simply been titled "De Panegyrico seu Laudatione." Did Pomey amplify the previous classroom material offered by an anonymous teacher and writer? Pars II remains "Rhetoricae Praecepta" and runs from 133-312. Pars I runs through six chapters touching fable and narration, and covers, respectively: fable (8-23), narration, chria, sententia, thesis, and a combination of "locus communis, destructio, and confirmatio." The fable section seems to remain the same. After the famous Greek definition of Theion done into Latin (" sermo falsus veritatem effingens" ), the author distinguishes "rational" (human) and " moral" (animal) fables, with " mixed" fables including both. He holds that the sense of the fable generally needs to be expressed; otherwise people often miss the point of a fable. His Latin for promythium is "praefabulatio," for epimythium "affabulatio." After describing the qualities and uses of fables, the author presents some nine fables that exemplify various levels of style, twice telling the same stories on two levels (WL and FC). The last example is of the florid style: "The Silkworm and the Spider" takes four pages to tell!

1707/2009 Esope En Belle Humeur, Ou Derniere Traduction Des ses Fables / Der Lustige und Anmuthige Aesopus.  Christian Friedrich Hunold, Nach der letzten Frantzösischen Ausfertigung Seiner Fabeln Ins Teutsche übersetzt Von Menantes.  Illustrations after Jan van Vianen.  Mit einem Vorwort von Dirk Rose.  Hardbound.  Hildesheim, Germany: Bewahrte Kultur:  Georg Olms Verlag.  €43.50 from Brungs und Hönicke Medienversand, Berlin, Jan., '15.  

This is a valuable reprint of one of the many books celebrating Aesop having fun.  The frontispiece identifies Hunold as Menantes.  The illustrations are only adequate.  According to Bodemann, they are based upon Solis and Salomon.  It is great to have them in the collection, even in a reproduction.   Those leanings upon earlier great fable illustration conceptions are clear in the second fable: "Fox and Goat."  The illustration is excellent but also derivative.  The French and German are presented in two columns on each page.  There is a typical problem with the lion's face on 19 and again on 23.  For each fable there is about a one-third page illustration above the two columns with their respective titles for the fables.  Further French fables are inserted in open space or open pages after the two-column fables.  The last of the fables -- XCV -- has an excellent illustration of the fox and wolf.  It is followed, as Bodemann notes, by seven French fables without German translation or illustration.  276 pages.  About 5" x 7".

1708 A New Translation of Æsop's Fables, Adorn'd with Cutts.  J.J. Gent (= John Jackson).  By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  Apparent first printing.  Hardbound.  London: Tho(mas) Tebb.  $220 from ElevenEleven Books, Clarkson, NY, through eBay, Oct., '13.

The title continues "Suited to the Fables Copied from the Frankfurt Edition. By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  The Whole being rendered in a Plain, Easy, and Familiar Style, adapted to the Meanest Capacities. Nevertheless Corrected and Reform'd from the Grossness of the Language, and Poorness of the Verse us'd in the now Vulgar Translation: The Morals also more accurately Improv'd; Together with Reflections on each Fable, in Verse."  Whew!  I was surprised to find this book offered on eBay, and I am delighted to save it.  The copy is, as the seller noted, in poor condition.  The good news is that the title-page and fable contents are intact, even if the spine has deteriorated and several early pages are lost.  I am amazed that this book is not in Bodemann.  The Van Sycham illustrations are strong, if simple.  As far as I can tell, there is an illustration on every right-hand page.  Excellent for its sheer vigor is the illustration for "The Wolf and the Sow" on 41.  The illustration for TMCM (15) follows a different tradition than do most illustrations and even this text; the center of the action appears to be not a dining room (as in the text) but an outdoor grain bin.  Is that a cat perched on the grain bin?  In all, the book's 288 pages -- followed by an eight-page AI -- contain some 215 fables.  There must be over a hundred illustrations.  I have ordered an inexpensive print-on-demand xerox of this book and will add that to the collection.  This is a tender little treasure!

1708 Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists with Morals and Reflexions, bound with: Fables and Storyes Moralized, Being a Second Part of the Fables of Aesop and other Eminent Mythologists, etc. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. Vol I: The Fifth Edition Corrected; Vol II: the Second Edition. Hardbound. Printed in London: Printed for R. Sare, A. & J. Churchil, D. Brown, T. Goodwin, M. Wotton, J. Nicholson, G. Sawbridge, B. Tooke, and G. Strahan; Vol. II printed for Richard Sare, also in 1708. $100 from an unknown source, July, '98.

Bodemann does not seem to have a separate listing for other than the 1692 first edition of L'Estrange's work. The second edition was in 1694, the third in 1699. In the same year, L'Estrange put out a second volume. My favorite private collector quotes Mark Kishlansky's essay "Turning Frogs into Princes" from Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: "L'Estrange's Aesop was so popular that it achieved three editions in seven years and then was followed by a second volume of non-Aesopic fables in the same format." We get both volumes here in one stout book. The page-format is smaller than in the first three editions of the first volume. Page-numbering starts anew in the second volume after the 550 pages of the first volume. This copy has a frontispiece portrait of L'Estrange; it also has the preface and the portrait of Aesop facing the "Life of Aesop." There is a set of advertisements for L'Estrange's writings just before the first fable. Again, this edition of L'Estrange seems typical for its heavy concentration on text. My understanding is that one of L'Estrange's major contributions to the history of fable publishing is the addition of the "Reflexion" to the moral. We will pay dearly for this innovation in reading L'Estrange's political and religious adversary, Croxall! The reflections include undisguised social and political commentary with more than a hint of Jacobitism. This copy is cracked in half. Its binding and spine are very weak and fragile, and the front cover has broken free but is present.

1708 Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien, Avec Celles de Philelphe: Traduction Nouvelle, Vol. 1. Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde. Copper etchings after Baudoin. First edition. Hardbound. Amsterdam: Pierre Mortier. £100 from R. Macauley, Norfolk, UK, through eBay, Sept., '11.

"Enrichie de Discours Moraux & Historique, & de Quatrains à la fin de chaque Discours." In fact, these "moral discourses" are a feature of this lovely little (4" x 6¼") book. The discourses can run to several pages of ruminations on the fables. Each of the seventy-eight fables in this first volume has an excellent copper etching. Bodemann #97.1 points out that these go back to Baudoin. I would have seen Barlow also in their background. With the extensive introductory material, particularly the Planudes life of Aesop in 29 chapters, fables do not begin until 94. Among the finest illustrations are "The Ass and the Dog" (134); "The Old Dog and His Master" (160); FS (175); "The Ass and the Horse" (204); "The Stag and the Horse" (236); "The Fox and the Wolf" (270); and BW (293). One can see the imprint the printer made in putting these pictures "into" the page. The engraver has the common problem with lions' faces, here particularly challenging on 244. There is a tear through 267. This is one of the stars of this collection. Now I need to find the second volume. The book is split through the spine at 96.

1708 Truth in Fiction or Morality in Masquerade: A Collection of Two hundred twenty five Select Fables of Aesop and other Authors Done into English Verse. Edmund Arwaker. Hardbound. London: J. Churchill. $50 from Philadelphia Rare Books & Manuscripts Company, through abe, August, '06.

Four books of fables in English verse in blind-stamped cloth, covers detached, cloth lost over spine. Lacking the title-page, first leaf of the dedication, and last six pages. Back free endpaper and pastedown with pocket and slip. Pages browned and foxed, with some waterstaining to first few leaves; last few leaves with edges a bit ragged. The foregoing comments are almost all from PRBM's description. The four books contain, respectively, 68, 68, 58, and 31 fables. Helpful subtitles often give the theme of the fable. Thus the first three fables are "The Peasant and Hercules: or No Pains, No Profit"; "Jupiter and the Tortoise: or Home is Home"; and "The Ass, Ape, and Mole: or Sufferings lightned [sic] by Comparison." I have been able to supply the lost title-pages and the final pages of the book from a copy on the Internet Archive. It also helps to be able to read the book online without disturbing this very fragile book! The format changes slightly in Book III, where the "theme" comes before the subject. There are a few fables which I do not immediately recognize as traditional here, including "The Mad-house: or Expensive Sports, destructive Folly" (I 32); "The Bigamists" (II 9); "The Lapwing" (II 11); "The Coffee-House: or A Man's Credit is His Cash" (III 29); and "The Miss: or the Sponge Squeezed" (III 53).

1708/2013 A New Translation of Æsop's Fables, Adorn'd with Cutts.  J.J. Gent (= John Jackson).  By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  Facsimile.  Paperbound.  London/NA: Tho(mas) Tebb/Gale Ecco Print Editions.  $3.41 from Amazon, Oct., '13.

Here is apparently a print-on-demand facsimile found at a sharply reduced price.  I ordered the book after I enjoyed cataloguing the original.  Before I include my comments from that book, I have a theory that the xerox bookmaking machine skipped a page just before the first page of fables here (1).  In the original, all the illustrations are on right-hand pages.  Here they are all on left-hand pages.  As I wrote there, the title continues "Suited to the Fables Copied from the Frankfurt Edition. By the Most Ingenious Artist Christopher Van Sycham.  The Whole being rendered in a Plain, Easy, and Familiar Style, adapted to the Meanest Capacities. Nevertheless Corrected and Reform'd from the Grossness of the Language, and Poorness of the Verse us'd in the now Vulgar Translation: The Morals also more accurately Improv'd; Together with Reflections on each Fable, in Verse."  Whew!  The Van Sycham illustrations are strong, if simple.  As far as I can tell, there is an illustration on every right-hand page.  Excellent for its sheer vigor is the illustration for "The Wolf and the Sow" on 41.  The illustration for TMCM (15) follows a different tradition than do most illustrations and even this text; the center of the action appears to be not a dining room (as in the text) but an outdoor grain bin.  Is that a cat perched on the grain bin?  In all, the book's 288 pages -- followed by an eight-page AI -- contain some 215 fables.  There must be over a hundred illustrations.

Phaedri Aug. Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum Libri Quinque. Hardbound. London: Jacob Tonson and John Watts; Michael Mattaire. £52.25 from Elaine Robinson, Rye, East Sussex, UK, Nov., '12.

Here is a Bodemann #100.1, a Phaedrus edition with a number of printer's designs. Unfortunately, this copy lacks the frontispiece featured in Bodemann 100.1. The printer's designs that mark the beginning and ending of each book and chapter seem unrelated to the fables themselves. Beginnings are further marked with elaborate initials. The five books of Phaedrus' fables conclude on 57 and are followed by "Fabulae Quaedam a Marquardo Gudio e veteri Manuscripto desumptae," containing five Latin fables, and a list of variant readings. The very detailed index to Phaedrus' fables starts after 62 and runs over seventy pages. The following appendix begins with a number of Greek fables: "Fabulae Graecae Latinis Phaedri Fabulis respondentes; Ex Aesopo." Then follow nine quatrains from "Gabrius," nine Latin prose fables, and finally forty-two Latin verse fables titled "Avieni Aesopicarum Fabularum Liber." A curious English language element headed "Anner" and signed "Dartmouth" follows the title-page; it seems to announce Michael Mattaire as the publisher. I do not understand how he fits with Tonson and Watts. I suspect that they put up the money and he did the publishing. Thereupon follow the dedication, lives of Phaedrus and "Avienus," a letter from Avianus to Theodosius, and an AI of the fables of Phaedrus. The book once belonged to Thomas Robyns. 

1714 Les Fables d'Esope et de plusiers autres excellens mythologistes.  Roger L'Estrange.  Illustrated by Francis Barlow.  Hardbound.  Amsterdam: D'Etienne Roger.  $1000 from Rooke Books, August, '20.

I have long wanted to add this book to the collection because of the 1666 Barlow that we already have.  It is not clear to me if the plates used here were by Barlow or after his 1666 originals.  In any case, the illustrations are again thrilling!  They now include those for the life of Aesop, not in the 1666 edition but in that of 1687.  The bookseller's notice indicates that the illustrations for the vita form "an unusually complete copy. Here with 27 plates as called for. All the copies at sold at auction in the last 40 years have been seriously incomplete being no more than 22 plates."  The 102 in-text engravings are fewer than were published because several pages have been removed.  Which pages becomes clear from the seller's account: "[4], v-lxxxiv, 1-60, 65-96, 99-118, 221-172, 175-208, 211-222, [2pp]."  In terms of the book's leaves, that means that the following are missing: H3, H4, N1, P4, Y3, and Dd1.  Page 121 is incorrectly numbered 221.  8" x 9.5".  Bookplate to the front pastedown 'Steadfast, John Gretton, Stapleford'. Gretton was a British businessman and Conservative politician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He won two gold medals in the 1900 Olympic Games for sailing.  Original calf binding.  Ribbon marker detached but present.  This book is another treasure!

1714 Les Fables d'Esope et de plusiers autres excellens mythologistes.  Roger L'Estrange.  Illustrations by Francis Barlow.  Hardbound.  Amsterdam: D'Etienne Roger.  $1100 from AdLitem, August, '19.

Perhaps due to some pandemic confusion, we have two copies of this marvelous book.  Here is the earlier copy, catalogued well after the later copy.  This copy lacks the frontispiece, has a sturdier cover, and is in slightly less good condition than our other copy, especially due to some foxing.  However, other than the missing frontispiece, this copy seems to be complete.  It thus makes a great companion to the other copy with its missing pages.  As I wrote of the copy acquired in 2020, I have long wanted to add this book to the collection because of the 1666 Barlow that we already have.  It is not clear to me if the plates used here were by Barlow or after his 1666 originals.  In any case, the illustrations are again thrilling!  They now include those for the life of Aesop, not in the 1666 edition but in that of 1687.  Page 121 is here, as there, incorrectly numbered 221.  8" x 9.5".  This book is another treasure!

1715 Fables and Stories Moralized, Being a Second Part of the Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists, etc., Vol. II. Third edition. By Sir Roger L'Estrange, Kt. Hardbound. London: Printed for Richard Sare near Grayes-Inn-Gate in Holborn. $80 from Patty Rosen, Bend, Oregon, Dec., '03.

Formerly presented to the Portsmouth Athenaeum by George Jaffrey, Esq. The covers are separated. Otherwise it is in fair to good condition. 5" x 7½". There are 277 numbered fables with morals and without illustrations. The format is what we are used to from L'Estrange: good prose fables separated from each other by a line across the page. Following each is a longish "Moral" in smaller typeface. Elements of the fable are frequently italicized. My favorite private collector quotes Mark Kishlansky's essay "Turning Frogs into Princes" from Political Culture and Cultural Politics in Early Modern England: "L'Estrange's Aesop was so popular that it achieved three editions in seven years and then was followed by a second volume of non-Aesopic fables in the same format." Bodemann surprisingly seems to list only the first edition of the first volume. Neither Hobbs nor Snodgrass is any help on the sources of the fables here. I notice several familiar old friends like "The Blind and the Lame." Ms. Rosen was good enough to sell me the book after I was able to answer some of her questions about it.

1717 Sir Roger L'Estrange's Fables, With Morals And Reflections, In English Verse. E. Stacy. London: Thomas Harbin. $35 at Ahab, Cambridge, MA, June, '91.

A curious little treasure. There are poetic versions of 201 of l'Estrange's 500 prose fables published in 1692, with shorter applications (they still seem long!). Stacy says that earlier verse attempts have been "flat and insipid" (l'Estrange's words for earlier attempts generally). The advertisement facing 1 promises a second volume. L'Estrange was not originally illustrated, and neither is Stacy. AI at the beginning.

1718 Favole Scelte.  Translated by Balthasar Nickisch.  Illustrations after Jan van Vianen?  Hardbound.  Ausburg: Johann Ulrich Krauss.  €320 from Antiquariat am Dom, Trier, July, '17.

Here is the top prize of the books I found on this summer trip around Europe.  We had an overnight in Trier.  I got to the bookstore in the afternoon, and Dr. Jochen Staebel mentioned that he had a fine old book at home.  We arranged that I would be back when he opened the next morning.  The book belonged to the head of the public library in Trier.  It is missing pages 1-2 and so does not have the first part of the first fable.  The book seems to be a printing 5 years later of Bodemann #88.4, itself a reprinting of a Krauss edition of 1707.  The edition -- even the title -- is trilingual.  The three languages are side by side for the fables but consecutive in the pages before the fables.  Illustrations -- with titles in all three languages -- come two to a page and measure about 3" x 2 1/2".  There are 95 fables on 106 pages.  Picture pages are not printed on the obverse and do not figure in the pagination.  According to Bodemann, the illustrations are based on #88.1 from 1695.  Where Bodemann's #88.4 has a frontispiece that sounds like the same as in #88.1, the frontispiece here is an elaborate scene situated on a pedestal.  Under the pedestal and on its front are scripts very difficult to read.  Vegetation grows up on both sides of the scene seated on the pedestal, offering various perches for birds and other animals, presumably characters in fables.  The viewer sees into a long background of waters, mountains, forests, and human habitation.  At the front of this scene, two human characters converse, surrounded by further animals including two mice at the front of the scene. An apparently older character seated on the left reaches a hand in explanation.  Similarly the standing character on the right reaches out his right hand, while his left hand balances what seems to be some kind of spear or perhaps a pruning hook.  I cannot find a similar frontispiece illustration in Bodemann.  For good samples of the fable illustrations here, consider "The Man and the Satyr" facing 16, OF facing 28, and DS facing 40.

1720 Fables Nouvelles Dediées au Roy. M. (Antoine Houdar) de La Motte. Quatrième Edition. Hardbound. Leiden: Balthasar Herwart. $53.67 from Robert Patocchi, Novato, CA, through eBay, June, '09.

I have wanted to dip into de La Motte's fables, and this book at last gives me a chance. Luckily, Google has a copy of an English translation online: One hundred new court fables: written for the instruction of princes, translated by a Dr. Samber, apparently in 1721. The book opens with a fable about the beautiful woman and the mirror. The mirror tells her that she is beautiful and that she has a few faults to correct. While the mirror is talking, admirers show up and she charms them -- and forgets the wise advice of the mirror. So, de La Motte suggests, is it with fable readers, and in this case the king as fable reader. After a long discourse on fable, the first fable of Book One speaks of an eaglet who tries his first look into the sun and his first flight. He can get only so far. Then he sees a mature eagle looking regularly into the sun and flying very high; that vision inspires him to keep trying and to seek greater things. "Thus Reading may begin, but 'tis Example that must accomplish all." A second fable strikes me particularly. It contrasts the pelican who returns to the nest without food and opens her chest to feed her children her own blood. A spider nearby calls the pelican a fool. Her food supply is her young! She shall never fail to have food because she consumes them! De La Motte challenges the kings of the world: Will you be pelicans or spiders to your subjects? Five books, without about twenty fables in each book. These are not as inaccessible as I feared they would be. 

1722 Fables of Aesop and Others. Newly done into English. With an Application to each Fable. Illustrated with Cutts. S.[amuel] Croxall. Cuts by Elisha Kirkall. First edition. London: Printed for J. Tonson at Shakespear's Head in the Strand, and J. Watts at the Printing Office in Wild-Court, near Lincolns-Inn Fields. $950 from Scott Ellis, Oct., '00.

At last I have arrived at a first edition of Croxall! And it is a good copy. Bodemann #107.1. Croxall is first mentioned at the end of the dedication to Halifax. At the beginning, what is labeled "The Contents of the Fables" is an AI. Use that to find a fable by one of its characters. This is a larger-format book (5¼" x 8¼") than any of its later editions or imitations that I know of. The Kirkall illustrations are the same size as, e.g., in the 1731 Third Edition, but the print and the margins are both larger here. It is such a pleasure to see the engravings distinct! Some that are especially clear and strong include FC (16), TMCM (63), GGE (101), "The Tunny and the Dolphin" (111), FWT (115), "The Thief and the Dog" (185), "The Thief and the Boy" (189), DM (223), "The Envious Man and the Covetous" (232), WSC (275), "The Fox in the Well" (285), and "The Ape and Her Two Young Ones" (316). I believe that I do not have Kirkall's frontispiece -- a statue of of Aesop proclaiming "panta mythos" -- in any other edition. Bodemann comments that about half of the visual motifs are taken from Barlow. 196 fables, 344 pages. Croxall gives at the end an "index" especially to qualities and persons.

1723 Selectiores Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae et Luciani Samosatensis Dialogi, Isocratis Orationes duae, Cebetis Thebani Tabula. Graece et Latine. In usum Juventutis Scoticae Graecarum literarum studiosae. Edinburgi: In Aedibus Tho. Ruddimanni, Sumptibus Geo. Stewart. $25.65 at B.D. McCutcheon "Bookshop," Stirling, Scotland, July, '92.

A typical early-18th century bilingual textbook for learning Greek, presumably from the already known Latin. 62 fables. AI by Latin names on 63-4. It was very nice to find something old done in Scotland to bring back with me. A real find in a bookshop where I was told several times "There is nothing here for you!"

1723/2018 Aesop's Fables in English & Latin, Interlineary, for the Benefit of those who not having a Master, Would Learn Either of these Tongues.  (John Locke).  Hardbound.  Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Literature and Language:  A.Bettesworth/Creative Media Partners: Gale: Cengage.  $27.95 from Amazon, July, '18.

Here is a second reprint of Locke, distinct from the Kessinger reprint of 2010.  It comes from an American publisher and is a copy of the second edition, not the first, and so is a helpful supplement to the 2010 reprint.  It is also hardbound.  The copy used for this Xeroxed version has many handwritten marginalia.  Apparently there were not significant changes from the 1703 original to the 1723 second edition.  I will include several comments from that reprint, since they also apply here.   I closed my remark on my original copy of this book with this comment: "I wonder why no one has ever reprinted this book."  Here is my answer.  This copy, manufactured at request, provides a good supplement to the original edition.  First of all, it contains the illustrations that are missing in that copy.  Secondly, it provides a book that can be used without harming that fragile copy over 300 years old.  There are 337 pages for two-hundred-and-thirty fables.  I think I laughed at Locke's project when I first read of it.  It makes more sense to me now.  He is trying to help people who cannot get to school to learn Latin, and he wisely conjectures that his book can also help those who already know Latin but need to learn English.  He admits in his preface that the English here will not be stellar.  But it will clearly reflect the Latin.  The printer does a good job of varying the typeface, so that a reader can easily see which Latin and English words correspond to each other.  While I am still not a fan of this method of learning, I admire the project and the practical working of Locke's mind to offer a method for learning Latin.  There is a page of errata just before the illustrations.

 

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1725 - 1749

1727 Fabellae Aesopicae Quaedam Notiores, in Scholis usitatae et compositae a Joachimo Camerario. M. Alberto Reineccio. Hardbound. Printed in Leipzig: M.G. Weidmann. $99 from BizWebEBooks, through Ebay, Feb., '02.

This is a surprising book. It is basically a student's complete resource work to understand perhaps 200 of Camerarius' fables in Latin prose. And so, while each right-hand page contains Camerarus' fable texts, each left-hand page is in two columns, giving respectively word and phrase vocabularies in German for the Latin of the fables. This is a seventeenth-century student help book! I cannot find it listed in either Bodemann or my favorite private collector. Page 1 may be lost. Note that only the right-hand pages count in the book's pagination. After 153 of these pages, there are indices of fables and commonplaces from the fables. Some of the fables include a Greek moral, and a third index pulls these Greek references together. The title goes on this way: "nunc vero nova ac utilissima ratione adjectis e regione vocabulis ac phrasibus Latino-Germanicis, ut & triplici indice, primo fabularum, altero rerum & locorum communium, tertio graecarum vocum analytico, in gratiam studiosae iuventutis adornatae." Camerarius' fables seem to have appeared first in 1538.

1728/1727 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de La Fontaine, Partie 1 - Partie 2.  Illustrator: Henrik Cause, after Chauveau.  Hardbound.  Amsterdam:  Chez Zacharie Chatelain.  $49.99 from njrambler through eBay, Sept.,' 17. 

This very fortunate find on eBay joins another book in the collection dated 1727/1728 and containing the third through fifth "books" of La Fontaine's fables.  These "books" do not correspond to La Fontaine's usual books but are rather Books VII through XII.  This pair of volumes comprises a fine reprint by Chatelain of an edition originally done in 1700 by van Bulderen, a copy of which is in this collection.  The anomaly of its dating appears to be that Partie 2 appeared first in 1727, to be followed by Partie 1 a year later.  Or perhaps the first half of this volume -- Partie 1 -- is a 1728 reprint of a work first done in 1727.  The frontispiece, presumably by Picard with a full explanation in French below it, shows Aesop dictating to La Fontaine with his muse.  Aesop looks up to Fable draping truth in clothing, while Morale is their companion.  Aesop and La Fontaine are surrounded by the animals active in their stories.  There is red print on the title page for Partie 1 (Books I-III) but not for Partie 2 (Books IV-VI); the other Chatelain volume does the same: red for the first but not for the second and third title-pages.  This book has the same size illustrations as that volume.  Henrik Cause is the engraver and he models these engravings after the drawings of Chauveau, as is clear already in GA (3).  The surprisingly large (2¾" x about 3") illustrations are well preserved here.  Among the best of them are perhaps "The Thieves and the Ass" (28); OR (45); SS (66); CW (80); MSA (88); "The Ass and the Lapdog" (152); GGE (214); and "The Horse and Ass" (259).  268 pages plus an AI.

1727 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de La Fontaine, Partie 3 - Partie 5.  Henrik Cause, after Chauveau.  Hardbound.  Amsterdam: Chez Zacharie Chatelain.  £ 21 from Wisdom Pedlars, Nov., '15.

This book has waited for cataloguing for several months.  Even now, I only happened to pick it up.  As it happens, I just catalogued a book in the same family yesterday!  That was Henry van Bulderen's 1700 volume containing all of La Fontaine's fables.  Bodemann #77 describes a family of editions that starts with Denys Thierry's 1668 publication of La Fontaine's first six books of fables, illustrated by Chauveau (Bodemann #77.1).  The first "Gesamtausgabe" of the twelve books was published between 1669 and 1694 in five "volumes," each of which contained one to three "books" of La Fontaine's fables (Bodemann #77.3).  Were these five, published by different publishers over twenty-five years, bound together to make one volume?  Volume I contained La Fontaine's first three books, and Volume II the next three books.  Life gets trickier with Volume III: it contained what we know as Books 7 and 8 of La Fontaine's fables, but they were called "Books I and II" and their pages were freshly paginated.  Volume IV contained what we know as Books 9-11 but called them "Books III to V."  Volume V contained what we know as Book 12 but called it, mistakenly, "Book VII."  Bodemann correctly notes "richtig VI."  Henrik von Bulderen published the next version of this book in 1688 (Volumes I through IV) and 1694 (Volume V): Bodemann #77.4.  He republished it in 1700 (Bodemann #77.8).  Zacharie Chatelain in Amsterdam published a similar volume in 1727, and here we have its second half.  That half includes Parts 3 through 5, that is, Books VII through XII of La Fontaine's fables.  This volume continues the unusual numbering of books and the mistaken numbering of the final volume.  My understanding is that Henrik Cause is the engraver and he models these engravings after the drawings of Chauveau.  The illustrations are very well preserved here.  133 pages (Parts 3 and 4) plus 123 pages (Part 5).The illustrations continue to be surprisingly large: 2¾" x about 3".  Parts 3 and 4 are each dated 1727 but Part 5 is dated 1728.

1727/38/1967 Fables. John Gay. Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing. Facsimiles of 1727 Fables and 1738 Fables: Volume the Second. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. $8 from the publisher, 1987.

The program is summed up in introduction: "Thus ev'ry object of creation/Can furnish hints to contemplation,/And from the most minute and mean/A virtuous mind can morals glean." 50 and 16 talky, preachy fables. Occasional wit: in I 5, the ram says that sheep get their revenge on mankind by supplying drums and parchment (for war). In I 10 a Greek-speaking elephant gets into a bookseller's shop. In I 12 a pet deer gets frisky and loses all inhibitions; the moral is pointed against country girls with soldiers. I 21 "The Ratcatcher and the Cats" comes close to Aesopic fable: touching and wise. Likewise, I 50's hare is deserted by all "friends"; the last of them says "We'll lament you"! The second volume has one great couplet: "And what's a butterfly? At best,/He's but a caterpillar, drest..." Fables are regularly turned against mankind as the most bestial of animals. Gay seems angry. I's illustrations are poor; Gravelot's in II are larger and better. It was a chore to read this book.

1727? (Fables of Aesop and Others.  Newly done into English.  With an Application to each Fable.  Illustrated with Cutts).  Samuel Croxall.  Elisha Kirkall.  Second edition?  Hardbound.  $150 from Mercy in Action Books, Oct., '15.

This book lacks a title page.  It was sent to me for analysis by Mercy in Action, to which it had been donated.  It also lacks a spine and cover, and has copious writing and doodling, for example, on the early pages. It seems to have been inscribed in 1781.  I have compared it with three other editions that I have, including a first edition from 1722.  That edition has no date at the end of the preface and has 1722 on its title-page.  It measures about 8” x 5”.  I also have a third edition from 1731 in very good condition but without a frontispiece.  I do not know if it is known whether the 1731 edition when published featured a frontispiece.  That 1731 edition includes the 1722 date at the end of the dedication and has 1731 on its title page.  That 1731 edition measures, like the present copy, about 6.5” x 4”.  I have an eleventh edition from 1778.  That edition has a different frontispiece.  The publishers have changed.  It retains the 1722 date at the end of the dedication and has 1778 on its title-page.  The frontispiece here is a redoing of the original larger 1722 frontispiece.  In both cases, it shows a statue of Aesop on top of a base declaring “Everything is a story” and quoting the Latin below the whole image: “The Attic Greeks created a huge statue and put a slave onto an eternal foundation.”  The fable illustrations in all four of these editions are, as far as I can tell, the original Elisha Kirkall illustrations.  The illustrations here are the same size as in both the 1722 and 1731 editions.  Bodemann calls the eleventh-edition fable illustrations “Nachschnitte,” but I am not convinced.  Perhaps I have missed some clues, but I think the printer in all these later editions had the same blocks that the 1722 printer had.  This present copy does not have a date after the dedication.  It does not have the same typesetting as either my first edition or my third edition, which are also different from each other.  The difference between this copy and my third edition is already clear in the different typesetting of the first page of the dedication, which is the first element after the title-page.  Bodemann has the first (1722) edition and then nothing until the eleventh (1778).  My guess then is that this copy is a second edition, whenever that was between 1722 and 1731.  I have guessed at 1727.  The absence of the date after the dedication may suggest a date like this.  The frontispiece’s similarity to the first edition’s frontispiece also pushes in the direction, I believe, of that dating.  Alternatively, it may be a fourth or later edition, from sometime between 1731 and 1778.  The late inscription tends in that direction.  In any case it is a lovely, tender book!  196 fables, 357 pages, plus seven pages of Croxall's "index" of qualities and persons.

1728 Fables By Mr. Gay. John Wootton and William Kent. The Second Edition. Hardbound. London: J. Tonson and J. Watts. $125 from Edward Pollack, August, '00.

I had just finished cataloguing several Gay editions when I received an offer from Edward Pollack for a set of two second editions, one each of the two volumes of Gay's fables. I am delighted to have this very good copy, marred only by a hole at the top of the spine. See my remarks on the fourth edition of 1733. I would add to my commendations there that of the dynamic illustration of "The tame Stag" (49). The final pages were missing in that edition. They are here. "Fable XXI" is not misprinted. The paper here is very robust. There are a couple of pencillings and one or two tears and chips along the way. Now can I work my way all the way back to a first edition? Someone wrote "Plates by Bewick" on the front endpaper. I do not think his career began for another generation.

1729 Esope en belle humeur ou l'elite de ses fables enrichies de figures/Esopus bey der Lust. Carl Mouton. First edition. Hardbound. Hamburg: Johann Christoph Kißner. $300 from The Book Chest, NY, Jan., '02.

Bodemann #88.6 and Fabula Docet #44. I am so lucky to have found this little (3½" x 6") book! Kißner represents the beginning of the bilingual "Esope en belle humeur" tradition, which will include my 1750 Christian Herold edition. The red and black title pages (one in French and one in German, separated by the frontispiece) are striking. After a preface and a vita with its own following T of C, the main sections here start with a basic Aesopic section of 99 "Fables Diverses" or "Unterschiedliche Fabeln," each offered in French and German columns with an excellent illustration. The attachments or appendices to individual fables in this section are printed only in French. This section is followed by one of 59 fables of Phaedrus and Philelphus, again in two columns, though without illustration. The following section offers 26 fables of de la Motte, with the two versions given on facing pages rather than in two columns. There are three T of C's at the end, corresponding to the sections of Aesop, Phaedrus, and de la Motte. Several sections reported in Bodemann #88.6 seem to be lacking here, as they are in the Wolfenbüttel exemplar they report on, namely "Les Devoirs de l'honnete Homme" and "fables des Grands et des Petits" (59 fables after Bidpai). Are we to assume that Philelphus is Pilpai? See also Die Bilderwelt im Kinderbuch, 14, 58, for a reference. Full new leather.

1729 Esope en belle humeur ou l'elite de ses fables enrichies de figures/Esopus bey der Lust.  Carl Mouton.  First edition.  Hardbound.  Hamburg: Johann Christoph Kißner.  $75 from 88backnorth, Ontario, Canada, through eBay, June, '16.

Here is a second copy of this book, bound in a different order and lacking several of the pages in my better copy.  Because it is different, I will keep it in the collection.  First, what did I write about the original copy that applies also to this copy?  Bodemann #88.6 and Fabula Docet #44.  I am so lucky to have found this little (3½" x 6") book!  Kißner represents the beginning of the bilingual "Esope en belle humeur" tradition, which will include my 1750 Christian Herold edition.  The main sections here start with a basic Aesopic section of 99 "Fables Diverses" or "Unterschiedliche Fabeln," each offered in French and German columns with an excellent illustration.  After most of these "major" fables, there is a shorter fable only in French without illustration.  This section (1-298) is followed by one of 59 fables of Phaedrus and Philelphus, again in two columns, though without illustration (289-408).  The following section (409-513) offers 26 fables of de la Motte, with the French and German versions given on facing pages rather than in two columns.  There are again three T of C's at the end, corresponding to the sections of Aesop, Phaedrus, and de la Motte.  What is different?  This copy lacks the red and black title pages (one in French and one in German, separated by the frontispiece), but the frontispiece is still here, perhaps formerly separated and pasted back in?  It now comes after a single black-and-white page giving the overall title.  It stands facing the title-page for the "Aesop" section.  The next difference is that the life of Aesop (1-101) with its own following T of C now is bound at the end of this volume.  The covers and spine are coming loose from this volume, and it went through a fire sometime in its existence.  Still, it is a lovely little treasure, especially for the illustrations!  Several sections reported in Bodemann #88.6 seem to be lacking here, as they are in the Wolfenbüttel exemplar they report on, namely "Les Devoirs de l'honnete Homme" and "fables des Grands et des Petits" (59 fables after Bidpai).  Are we to assume that Philelphus is Pilpai?  See also Die Bilderwelt im Kinderbuch, (14, 58) for a reference.

1729 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine avec la Vie d'Esope, Tome Premier.  Illustrations after Chauveau.  Nouvelle Edition.  Hardbound.  Paris: La Compagnie des Libraires; L'Imprimerie de Pierre Prault.  CHF133 from Librairie Eos, Zurich, July, '23.

Bodemann 77.12.   Nineteen years ago I wrote, in cataloguing the third of three volumes in this publication, that I needed to find the other two.  These many years later, I finally satisfied that need!  This first volume covers Books I-IV.  Bodemann's comment indicates that this edition is one of many that copied Chauveau's illustrations from the first edition of La Fontaine's fables.  There is a T of C for this volume at the beginning after the usual preface and life of Aesop.  There is a new page for each new fable and an illustration for each fable or for those that La Fontaine himself already paired.  One page, 145-46, is severely torn, but the tear does not affect the illustration on 146.  Though this work copies Chauveau, I find these illustrations often more distinct and dramatic. At 3" x 2½", they are also often larger than Chauveau's original work.  By the way, this volume is a good example of the kind of printing that went on in two stages, with the picture printer not always finding his way well with what the print printer had left him.  Particularly good illustrations include 2W (I 17, 46); "Child and Schoolmaster" (I 19, 46); OR (I 22, 52); "Eagle and Snail" (II 8, 73); SS (II 10, 81); CW (II 18, 99) ; MSA (III 1, 109); FG (III 11, 139); "The Lion in Love" (IV 1, 166); and FM (IV 11, 196).  The illustration for FG (139) has the fox climbing rather than leaping.  223 pages.  4¼" x 6½".

1729 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine avec la Vie d'Esope, Tome Second.  Illustrations after Chauveau.  Nouvelle Edition.  Hardbound.  Paris: La Compagnie des Libraires; L'Imprimerie de Pierre Prault.  CHF133 from Librairie Eos, Zurich, July, '23.

Bodemann 77.12.   Here is the second volume so long sought for after first finding the third volume nineteen years ago.  This volume covers Books V-IX.  Bodemann's comment indicates that this edition is one of many that copied Chauveau's illustrations from the first edition of La Fontaine's fables.  There is a T of C for this volume at the beginning.  There is a new page for each new fable and an illustration for each fable or for those that La Fontaine himself already paired.  Though this work copies Chauveau, I find these illustrations often more distinct and dramatic. At 3" x 2½", they are also often larger than Chauveau's original work.  As in the first volume, each illustration includes both the page and the number of the fable in its book.  Particularly good illustrations include 2P (V2, 7); TB (V 20, 47); "Horse and Ass" (VI 16, 88); "Coach and Fly" (VII 8, 135); "The Pig, Goat, and Sheep" (VIII 12, 207); "Horoscope" (VIII 16, 221); and "Cat and Fox" (IX 14, 305).  On 178, the lion actually wears the skin of the skinned wolf!  335 pages.

1729 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine avec la Vie d'Esope, Tome Troisième.  Illustrations fter Chauveau.  Nouvelle Edition.  Hardbound.  Paris: La Compagnie des Libraires; L'Imprimerie de Pierre Prault.  CHF133 from Librairie Eos, Zurich, July, '23.

Bodemann 77.12.   Here is the third volume in the set, duplicating the book found nineteen years ago.  In keeping with prior practice I will include both books, the one found alone and this one found in a set.  This volume covers Books X-XII.  Though this work copies Chauveau, I find these illustrations often more distinct and dramatic. At 3" x 2½", they are also often larger than Chauveau's original work.  As in the first volume, each illustration includes both the page and the number of the fable in its book.  There is a T of C for this volume at the beginning and an AI for all three volumes at the end.  A good typical instance of the work here might be the illustration for "Le Cerf Malade" (XII 6, 113).  The characters and the problem are clearly presented.  Other good illustrations include "Le Renard, les Mouches, & le Hérisson" (XII 13, 140) and "Le Renard, le Loup, & le Cheval" (XII 17, 156).  T of C, 261 pages, "Approbation," "Privilege du Roy," AI, and "Fautes à corriger."  Previous owners inscribed the book in 1740 and 1833.

1729 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine avec la Vie d'Esope, Tome Troisième. Illustrations after Chauveau. Nouvelle Edition. Hardbound. Paris: La Compagnie des Libraires; L'Imprimerie de Pierre Prault. £ 26 from Elaine Dayes, East Yorkshire, UK, through eBay, July, '04.

Bodemann 77.12. This is the third of three volumes, covering Books X-XII. The "12" in Bodemann's catalogue indicates that this edition is one of many that copied Chauveau's illustrations from the first edition of La Fontaine's fables. Apparently, according to Bodemann, the first eleven books contain copies of the Amsterdam edition of 1698, while the twelfth book has direct imitations of Chauveau's early work, first published for the twelfth book in 1694. There is a T of C for this volume at the beginning and an AI for all three volumes at the end. Though the work here copies Chauveau, I find these illustrations often more distinct and dramatic. At 3" x 2½", they are also often larger than Chauveau's original work. A good typical instance of the work here might be the illustration for "Le Cerf Malade" (113). The characters and the problem are clearly presented. Other good illustrations include "Le Renard, les Mouches, & le Hérisson" (140) and "Le Renard, le Loup, & le Cheval" (156). T of C, 262 pages, "Approbation," "Privilege du Roy," AI, and "Fautes à corriger." Inscribed July 6, 1732 in Paris. Now I need to find the other two volumes of this set!

1731  Aesop's Fables English and Latin/Aesopi Fabulae Anglo-Latinae. Charles Hoole. London: J. Read. $125 from Carl Sandler Berkowitz, March, '95.

A fine little bilingual (on facing pages) edition offering 233 fables in its first book and (starting on 154) 208 fables in its second. There is an English AI after 267. The title-page and early pages are worm-eaten. The book is highly fragile. The fables are carefully divided and literally translated. Worn calf. This is a book to handle carefully!

1731 Fables of Aesop and Others. Newly done into English. With an Application to each Fable. S[amuel] Croxall. Illustrations by Elisha Kirkall, not acknowledged. 3rd edition. Hardbound. London: Printed for J. Tonson at Shakespear's Head in the Strand, and J. Watts at the Printing Office in Wild-Court, near Lincolns-Inn Fields. $370 from Alibris, March, '00.

What a delight to have found so early an edition of Croxall in good to very good condition! This copy fits Bodemann's description of the first edition from 1722 (#107.1) except for the number of pages (345 here, 344 there). Here, apparently as there, Croxall is first mentioned at the end of the dedication to Halifax. To quote Alibris' description: "Simply bound in modern full leather, contrasting label, gilt. Spine with raised bands. The title-page has been laid down. A good, clean copy." The Kirkall illustrations are done here with various levels of firmness. Some are unfortunately somewhat faint, e.g. on 32 and 247, others more distinct, e.g. on 155 and 236. Somewhere I had mis-learned that the first edition was done anonymously and that only a subsequent edition had added Kirkall's illustrations to Croxall's texts. While Kirkall is mentioned neither here nor in the first edition, these are his illustrations, as Bodemann makes clear. Unfortunately, Gerard van der Gucht's frontispiece--if it was printed with this edition--is missing here. Croxall gives at the end an "index" especially to qualities and persons. At the beginning, what is labeled "The Contents of the Fables" is an AI. Use that to find a fable by one of its characters.

1731 Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien.  Traduites & Moralisees par J. Baudoin.  Hardbound.  Lyon: La Veuve de Claude Carteron.  £19.95 from Goldenstag, Edinburgh, through Ebay, Nov., '22.

Here is a lovely little (6" x 3½") Baudoin edition published exactly 100 years after the first Baudoin.  Our collection has older Baudoin editions from 1649, 1659, 1660 (two), and 1669.  Like those, this edition contains a basic 118 fables, each numbered and followed by a "discours Maurois," as is typical for Baudoin.  After these 118, there is an "Augmentation" presenting 119-138, each of these with not a "discours" but a much shorter "remarque."  Most fables have a rectangular illustration 2" x 1⅜".  These are well preserved but quite simple.  A good sample is WL on 118.  As I believe to be typical of Baudoin, the first fable is CJ.  Contemporary leather covered boards.  Vii + 520 pp.  The title continues "Augmentees de Plusieres Autres Fables d'Esope, qui ont ete omises dans les Presedentes Impressions."  There is a T of C at the end.

1731 Nouveau Recueil des Fables d'Esope, Mises en François. Nouvelle Edition. Hardbound. Paris: Charles LeClerc. £79 from Paul Foster, Bookseller, London, through eBay, Oct., '05. 

This lovely little book has one of those endless titles. Here is more of it: "Avec le Sens Moral en quatre Vers & des Figures à chaque Fable. Dedié a la Jeunesse. Nouvelle Edition, augmentée des Quatrains du Sieur de Benserade." The source behind this book, according to Bodemann #80.1, was published by Sebastian Mabre-Cramoisy in Paris in 1678. LeClerc apparently brought out an edition in 1718. Bodemann's #80.2 is a 1756 printing. This book of mine would have preceded that one and followed the 1718 edition. It has the requisite 442 pages and 223 fables. As Bodemann notes, the last two of these fables are imageless epigrams without illustration added to the 1678 edition's 221 illustrated fables. There is an AI immediately following the 442 pages of text. The illustrations are oval. Bodemann's comments underscore their narrow dimensions, the concentration on the main characters, the lack of attention paid to background or scenery, the frequent cross-hatching, and the broken contours within the ovals. The illustrations are well preserved here! A good, typical example is FS on 53. This book may be one of the few I have that includes Benserade's quatrains.

1731/1975? Fables and Other Short Poems Collected from the Most Celebrated English Authors. Illustrated by John and George Bickham. London: Thomas Cobb. Williamsburg reprint undated. $5 in Williamsburg, '85. Extra copy, a gift of Greg Haille, Dec., '87.

A wonderfully curious collection of nice moralistic rhymed fables. Almost all match Gay's titles perfectly, but these are not Gay's fables! Each has a pleasing engraving. Between the fables come samples of good handwriting, moral precepts, and other goodies!

1731/1991 Fables and Other Short Poems Collected from the Most Celebrated English Authors. Illustrated by John and George Bickham. London: Thomas Cobb. Reproduced by The Friends of the Osborne and Lillian H. Smith Collections, Toronto Public Library. $25 with membership in the Friends of the Osborne Collection, Jan., '94.

This book adds Volumes II and III to my 1731/1975? book from Williamsburg. Volume II includes ten fables, assorted other material, and A New Introduction to the Art of Drawing. The third volume includes eleven fables. How and why these fables can match Gay so carefully for titles are mysteries to me. Jill Shefrin's afterword states simply that the fables here "are from the first volume of Gay's collection. Their order has been changed and within each fable lines have been deleted, transposed or revised." The afterword goes on to note frequent cases by the Bickhams of what we would call copyright infringement. Each fable has a pleasing engraving. Between fables are samples of good handwriting, moral precepts, and other goodies!

1732 Aesopi Phrygis Fabulae Nunc demum ex Collatione Optimorum Exemplarium ab infinitis pene Mendis repurgatae una cum nonnullis Variorum Autorum Fabulis adjectis et indice correctiori praefixo. Hardbound. London: Typis T. Wood, Impensis Societatis Stationariorum. $45 from Caliban Book Shop, Feb., '02.

This is a strange little (3½" x 5½") volume to come from England. It follows the structure of many of the earliest little fable editions, beginning with a six-page life of Aesop excerpted or digested from that of Planudes, with a curious last page number of 67. Next comes an eight-page AI of fables offered in the volume, followed by a list of "Interpretes." These include Adrianus Barlandus, Angelus Politianus, Anianus, Aulus Gellius, Erasmus Roterodamus, Gulielmus Gaudanus, Gulielmus Harmanus, Joannes Antonius Campanus, Laurentius Abstemius, Laurentius Valla, Nicolaus Gerbelius Phorcensis, Petrus Crinitus, Plinius secundus Novocomensis, and Rimicius. A section given to each of these seems to follow, though I cannot find the section given to Angelus Politianus. Poggio (not mentioned in the list of Interpretes) is the last of the authors, finishing on 176. The book is very frail, and both covers have long since separated from the book. A worm did some powerful eating between about 70 and 120.

1732/1970? The Fable of the Bees: Or Private Vices, Publick Benefits. By Bernard Mandeville. Original Fourth Edition: London: J. Tonson. Reprint: Seattle: Entropy Conservationists. $1 in Denver, March, '94.

I read this work over a Big Mac in Boulder and enjoyed it! Originally the bees were full of vices and they were thriving. "Their crimes conspired to make them great" (5). Then Jove removed fraud, and there were surprising results. Prices went down; lots of trades went out of business; pride and luxury decreased; eventually all arts and crafts shut down; the whole economy stopped. Moral: Vice is beneficial when constrained by justice. The text itself is 13 short pages.

1733 Fables By Mr. Gay. John Wootton and William Kent. The Fourth Edition. Hardbound. London: J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts. Gift of June Clinton, June, '98.

Here is a wonderful little treasure! It falls between Bodemann 110.1 (the first edition) and 110.2 (the fifth edition). It includes only the first 50 fables because the additional seventeen were first published in only 1738. This is a beautiful little book, which June got at Sotheby's sale of the Earl of Granard's library in July, '93. That may be his bookplate facing hers inside the front cover. I am particularly taken on this trip through with the dynamism of "The Lady and the Wasp" (VIII), the foppishness of "The Monkey Who Had Seen the World" (XIV), the exactitude of "The Pin and the Needle" (XVI), and the turbulence of "The Farmer's Wife and the Raven" (XXXVII) complete with broken eggs. The monkeys of XXII ("The Goat without a Beard") are curiously human. Pages 189-92 are missing, including the illustration for the last fable (L). There are a number of small repairs to the paper of particular pages. "Fable XXI" is misprinted as "Fable XIX." I wonder how many copies of this book in this edition still exist around the world.

1733? Fables By Mr. Gay. John Wootton and William Kent. (The Fourth Edition). Hardbound. (London): (J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts). $50 from an unknown source, Jan., '08.

This book is a lovely little anomaly. It seems another copy of the fourth edition of Fables by Mr. Gay, published by J. and R. Tonson and J. Watts in 1733. It matches up very well with a copy I have of that book. It thus has several tell-tale signs. Its illustrations are reversed from those of the second edition (1728) but are the same in orientation as those of the seventh (1753). Like the fourth edition, it has the misprint of "Fable XIX" for what should be "Fable XXI." This mistake is in neither the second nor the seventh edition. This copy is singular for a deficiency and an addition. The deficiency is the lack of all pages up to the "Introduction to the Fables" on a page that is marked "B." The addition is a page inserted after the introduction and before the first regular fable. This page is a handwritten T of C with page numbers. This copy has the pages lacking in my other copy, namely 189-92. The front cover is literally hanging on by a thread. The engravings show the same deep indentation in the paper. Let me repeat some of my comments made on the other copy. Here is a wonderful little treasure! It falls between Bodemann 110.1 (the first edition) and 110.2 (the fifth edition). It includes only the first 50 fables because the additional seventeen were first published in only 1738. I am particularly taken on this trip through with the dynamism of "The Lady and the Wasp" (VIII), the foppishness of "The Monkey Who Had Seen the World" (XIV), the exactitude of "The Pin and the Needle" (XVI), and the turbulence of "The Farmer's Wife and the Raven" (XXXVII) complete with broken eggs. The monkeys of XXII ("The Goat without a Beard") are curiously human. I wondered ten years ago and wonder still how many copies of this book in this edition still exist around the world.

1734 Fables and Tales from La Fontaine in French and English Now First Translated, To which is prefix'd the Author's Life. Anonymous. Hardbound. London: Printed for A. Bettsworth and C. Hitch and C. Davis. $550 from Charta Book Co., Indianapolis, Feb., '00. 

I quote from my favorite private collector (F-0405, with a duplicate C-159): "An attractive edition with the text in French and English on facing pages. Not illustrated, but decorated throughout with a great variety of printers' ornaments used as head and tailpieces. The translator erroneously claims his version to be the first in English. Possibly the first version to have the text in both languages. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, Vol. II, p. 784 lists a Mandeville translation of 1703." One hundred fables rendered into English prose, with four additional tales. Bound here with The Tales and Fables of the late Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, Author of Telemachus, in French and English, that is, Fénelon, published in 1736 by John Hawkins. Be careful: Bettsworth is spelled in various ways. Bodemann lists it with another "e" before the "w." The advertisement on the very last page of this rather thick and hefty book includes a second "e" but drops the "s"! I notice that in SW on 239, La Fontaine's appropriate wager "Which of us will strip his shoulders" is changed in the English here to the less appropriate "who of us two shall first oblige yon Man on Horseback to uncover his Shoulders."

1735 Favole Scelte/Auserlesene Fablen/Fables Choisies.  Translated by Balthasar Nickisch.  Illustrations by Johann Ulrich Krauss.  Hardbound.  Augsburg: Johann Ulrich Krauss.  $200 from RB Books and Publishing, Overland Park, KS, through Ebay, Sept., '21.

Here is a later publication from a family in which we already have an older brother.  Several years ago in Trier I found "Favole Scelte" published by Johann Ulrich Krauss in 1718 with illustrations apparently done by him.  That book is based on Bodemann #88.4.  It was the prize of a summer's book-hunting.  Now here is apparently the same book published a generation later.  All that I write there seems true here, with the exception of some pages being off by two digits here from what they are there.  Here "The Man and the Satyr" faces 18, and OF faces 30, while DS still faces 40.  6½" x 8".  This copy has the first two pages missing in that book.  As I wrote then, this edition -- even the title -- is trilingual.  The three languages are side by side for the fables but consecutive in the pages before the fables.  Illustrations -- with titles in all three languages -- come two to a page and measure about 3" x 2½".  There are 95 fables on 106 pages.  Picture pages are not printed on the obverse and do not figure in the pagination.  This book has the same frontispiece as that, which I describe there in some detail.  On this reading, I am struck by the stylized character of most of the illustrations.  That style has to do with the cumulative effect of single lines.  One can see it in an illustration like LXI of a stag at the water.  The same style is evident in LXIX and LXX.  This artist also has understandable issues with rendering lions, like that in LXII.

1736  Le Cento Favole di Gabbriello Faerno e Una Favola di Batista Mantovano, Tradotte in Versi Volgari da D. Giovan-Grisostomo Trombelli. Venezia: Francesco Pitteri. $125 from The Owl at the Bridge, Cranston, August, ’96.

I am glad at last to have a copy of Faerno’s fables, certainly one of the mainstays of the fable tradition. This edition, without illustrations, has Latin and Italian on facing pages. A sampling of the fables finds them traditional and their Latin easier than I had expected. I found only one surprise. In IV, the wolf, having been kicked by an ass, says something like "I who am a cook should not have tried to do a doctor’s work" ("Neque enim, coquus qui sum, agere medicum debui"). Mantovan’s fable (130-31) shows the silliness of transplanting an old tree instead of enjoying its fruit. There is an AI on 144-7. For Faerno, see Hobbs 44.

1736 The Tales and Fables of the late Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, Author of Telemachus, in French and English. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon; by Nathaniel Gifford, of the Inner-Temple, Gent. Illustrated with Twenty-nine Copper-Plates Engraven by George Bickham, Junior. Hardbound. London: Printed for John Hawkins, and Sold by John Osborn. $360 from Suzanne and Truman Price, Columbia Basin Books, Monmouth, OR, June, '03. 

The title continues: "Written originally for the Instruction of a Young PRINCE, And now publish'd for the Use of SCHOOLS. To which is prefix'd, An Account of the Author's LIFE, extracted from the Memoir's of the Chevalier Ramsay, Author of the Travels of Cyrus. With a particular and curious Relation of the Method observed in training up the young Prince, even from his Infancy, to Virtue and Learning." Twenty-eight stories in French and English facing. I count perhaps sixteen fables, namely #10 through #25. Shapiro (xvi) speaks well of the "rather turgid moralizings of Fénelon's seventeenth-century fables written for the edification of the young duc de Bourgogne." These are prose fables, and for that reason Shapiro does not include them in his anthology. I found it rather difficult to get through these belabored texts. Among the best is "The Two Foxes." Two foxes slaughter a cock and many hens and chickens. The older one wants to eat only some now and return tomorrow and succeeding days for others. The younger one wants to gorge himself on what they have slaughtered. Both do as they please. The younger scarcely makes it back to his home before he dies. The older returns the next day and is killed by the farmer. Each age has its own vices. In the following fable, the wolf talks the lamb into jumping over the fence to enjoy some good grass. That is of course the end of the lamb. Among the best illustrations are those for "The Dragon and the Two Foxes," "The Wolf and the Lamb," and "The Owl that long'd to be married." Not in Bodemann or Snodgrass. I am very happy at last to have Fénelon in English. Apparently the first publication of the fables by Fénelon was about 1718 or 1719, and the first English translation was in 1729, published in London by J. Wilcox.

1736 The Tales and Fables of the late Archbishop and Duke of Cambray, Author of Telemachus, in French and English. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon; by Nathaniel Gifford, of the Inner-Temple, Gent. Illustrated with Twenty-nine Copper-Plates Engraven by George Bickham, Junior. Hardbound. London: Printed for John Hawkins, and Sold by John Osborn. $550 from Charta Book Co., Indianapolis, Feb., '00. 

Identical with another volume in the collection with the same bibliographical data, except that this copy is bound with Fables and Tales from La Fontaine, published by Bettsworth and Hitch in 1734. See my comments on the Fénelon book under that item.

1738 Fables. John Gay. Introduction by Vinton A. Dearing. Facsimiles of 1727 Fables and 1738 Fables: Volume the Second. Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, UCLA. See 1727/38/1967.

1738 Fables By the late Mr Gay, Volume the Second. Illustrations by Hubert Francois Gravelot. The First Edition. Hardbound. London: J. and P. Knapton and T. Cox. £33.33 from H & K Gostling, The Antique Shop, Thatcham, Berks, UK, through eBay, March, '06. 

At last I have made my way back to a first edition of this second volume of Gay's fables. I will repeat some of what I wrote for the second edition, which I found some six years ago. I find the Gravelot illustrations strong. They take up the full page and remind one of Oudry's work. It may be that Hobbs' use of it (71) has prejudiced me in its favor, but I find "The Man, the Cat, the Dog, and the Fly" (69) among the best. See her good comments there. This is Bodemann #110.5. I agree with Bodemann's description of the illustrations as "geschickt komponierte und in den Tonwerten fein nuancierte Rokokostiche." The frontispiece of Gay's grave-monument, missing in my second edition of this second volume, is present here. Bodemann reproduces it with her comment on this volume. Gravelot signs each of the illustrations, but I cannot find him otherwise acknowledged in this book. The back cover is becoming separated. A great find, especially at this price!

1738 Versuch in poetischen Fabeln und Erzehlungen. Friedrich von Hagedorn (acknowledged?). Engravings by C.A. Wagner and Christian Fritzsch. First edition. Hardbound. Hamburg: Conrad König. €164 from Antiquariat Niedersätz, Berlin, July, '07.

Here is a lovely first edition that I found at one of the first bookstores I tried on this trip to Berlin. It contains seventy-one verse fables, taken particularly from Burkhard Waldis, La Fontaine, and French fabulists just before Hagedorn's time. The leisurely T of C at the end of the book lists the source(s) for each fable. Besides numerous designs after fables, apparently unrelated to each fable's content, there are only three illustrations in the whole 210-page book. The title-page engraving shows truth personified. The illustration atop the foreword shows the freeing of Aesop. The illustration to the first text shows Bathsheba at her toilette. This illustration thus refers more to the frame-narrative than to the fable told by Nathan to the king. For its age, this book is in good condition. I cannot find Hagedorn's name anywhere in the book!

1740 Herrn Daniel Wilhelm Trillers Philos. Ac Med. D. Archiatri Nassouici, Neue Aesopische Fabeln. Daniel Triller. (missing copper engraving). Hardbound. Hamburg: Christian Herold. €80 from Dresdener Antiquariat, August, '09.

The unassuming present-day green cloth cover hides a lovely book here! I have known Herold as publisher of the 1750 editions of Carl Mouton, including Esope en belle humeur. This volume has the same compact size, the same lack of margins, and the same preference for red ink on the title-page. This is Bodemann #118.1. What this volume lacks -- as the bookdealer noted -- is its one illustration, the copper engraved frontispiece. It is illustrated in Bodemann at #118.1. An explanation of the frontispiece is in fact the first element in the book. Bodemann's entry gives a good sense of the book: "150 Versfabeln, in den Motiven teilweise auf aesopisches Traditionsgut zurückgehend, dazu zahlreiche neu erfundene Fabeln zumeist mit dinglichen Protagonisten, was gemäss der Absicht des Dichters grosse Verwunderung und damit Aufmerksamkeit beim Leser hervorruft. Am Ende jeder Fabel eine manchmal als Sprichwort formulierte Lehre." With "dinglichen Protagonisten" Bodemann refers, I believe, to such subjects as diamonds, magnets, books, flame, and smoke. Triller sometimes gives a source for his numbered fables. I tried several and found them quite traditional, if perhaps a bit simple. "Das Kind und der Frosch" (222) teaches that a frog wants the swamp: "Art lässet nimmermehr von Art." "Das Rohr und die Eiche" (223-4) leads up to a sudden change of fortune. "Was sich nicht biegen lässt, muss brechen." There are two "Registers" at the end, one alphabetical by first subject and the other alphabetical by beginning of the "Sittenlehre." 335 pages. 

1740/53? Aesop's Fables. With Instructive Morals and Reflections Abstracted from all Party Considerations, Adapted To All Capacities; and design'd to promote Religion, Morality, and Universal Benevolence. Containing Two Hundred and Forty Fables, with a Cut Engrav'd on Copper to each Fable. And the Life of Aesop prefixed, by Mr. Richardson. York: Printed for T. Wilson and R. Spence. $45 at Spivey's, Kansas City, May, '93.

I have changed the date on this edition after getting a copy of a London edition, for which I have guessed a date of 1761. This edition seems to be that which Ulrike Bodemann places as a second edition of 1753, at the same time as an identical edition from London with a long list of publishers. Notice Richardson's attempt, even on the title page, to avoid the factionalism that surrounded l'Estrange and others. He himself finds two English editions worthy of notice: l'Estrange and Croxall. At the end of the preface (xii-xiii), there are lists of fables from l'Estrange not included here, of fables given new morals or reflections, and of fables altered from the l'Estrange version. A life of Aesop and an alphabetical index follow, still before the fables. "Morals" and "Reflections" are presented separately from each other, though sometimes two fables are handled together and share both of the above. Missing: 101-4 and the pages of illustrations for #101-110, #131-40, and #161-70. Many of the illustrations are water-colored. They are simple in design and execution. They differ apparently from the illustrations, six to a page, in Lessing's translation of Richardson in 1757. Depictions of lions and of frogs are particularly haphazard (117, 155, 156, 158). There are many new fables for me, and some traditional ones are told differently. The miller throws his ass into the water (#226)! Errata: 89 at top has "Aesop's Fbales." 137 (#175) has in its moral my for may. #212 has in its fifth-to-last line feul for fuel. #233 has "conside-able." It needs an r. I can report now, in Feb., '97, that these text errors are not in the Huntington copy, for which some hand has guessed 1750 as a date. Its title page lists "London: Printed for J. Rivington, R. Baldwin" and a list of some thirteen others. One of those thirteen is a J. Dodsley. Bodemann comments aptly that the illustrations are based on those of Barlow.

1740/61? Aesop's Fables. With Instructive Morals and Reflections Abstracted from all Party Considerations, Adapted To All Capacities; and design'd to promote Religion, Morality, and Universal Benevolence. Containing Two Hundred and Forty Fables, with a Cut Engrav'd on Copper to each Fable. And the Life of Aesop prefixed. by Mr. Richardson. Hardbound. London: For T. & T. Longman, C. Hitch & L. Hawes, I. Hodges I. & I. Rivinton, G. Keith & R. Dodsley. £70 by mail from D.M. Fairburn at Rarebooks, Leeds, June, '99.

I had been working with my York Richardson from Spivey in Kansas City, which I had suspected was a second and maybe even a secondary edition. See my comments there. Now I am delighted to get this book. Some bookseller has written "1761" in pencil on the title-page. Though the date is likely in general, it may come from the fact that Dodsley, listed as the last of the publishers here, published his own fable book in 1761. So far I can find no record of a 1761 printing of this book. Ulrike Bodemann's Katalog Illustrierter Fabelausgaben 1461-1990, Vol. 2, Item 131.2 speaks of an original 1749 publication date with J. Osborne as publisher in London. I think the original publication was rather in 1740. She lists two identical copies of a 1753 second edition: York: T. Wilson and R. Spence (my Spivey copy mentioned above) and London: J.F. & C. Rivington, T. Longman, B. Law, W. Nicol, G.G.J. & J. Robinson, T. Cadell, R. Baldwin, S. Hayes, W. Goldsmith, W. Lowndes, Power & Co. My favorite private collector's notes do not indicate a 1761 edition but rather editions in 1739/40, 1747?, 1773, and 1776? He has an edition that he seems to date to 1776, but that publisher's list is different from mine. Common to mine and his 1776 are five of my eight names: Longman, Hawes, Rivinton (sic), Keith, and Dodsley. Common to mine and Bodemann 1753 are two of my eight names: Rivinton (sic) and Longman. Does this comparison not suggest that my edition belongs between the two dates of 1753 and 1776? In any case, this is a remarkably clean copy for its age. The typos I had found in the York edition are not here, though there is the unusual spelling FEWEL in #212. A page of ten life-vignettes faces the title-page, and the other twenty-four pages of fable-vignettes are intact. In all 192 pages long. I am just delighted to have found this book!

1740/2010 Aesop's Fables with Instructive Morals and Reflections, abstracted from all party considerations, adapted to all capacities: and design'd to promote religion, morality, and universal benevolence. Samuel Richardson. Paperbound. London/La Vergne, TN: Eighteenth Century Collections Online Print Editions: J. Osborn, Junior/Gale Ecco. $21.09 from Amazon.com, Oct., '10.

This is a good publish-on-demand printing of apparently the most original of the Samuel Richardson editions. Ecco says the title-page is engraved "Published November 20, 1739." Bodemann #131.1 is their first copy, printed in 1749, but they indicate a first copy done in 1740. Both have Osborn(e) as publisher. As I comment on my earliest copy of Richardson, notice Richardson's attempt, even on the title page, to avoid the factionalism that surrounded l'Estrange, Croxall, and others. Richard himself finds two English editions worthy of notice: l'Estrange and Croxall. At the end of the preface (xii-xiii), there are lists of fables from l'Estrange not included here, of fables given new morals or reflections, and of fables altered from the l'Estrange version. A life of Aesop and an alphabetical index follow, still before the fables. "Morals" and "Reflections" are presented separately from each other, though sometimes two fables are handled together and share both of the above. The illustrations are simple in design and execution. They differ apparently from the illustrations, six to a page, in Lessing's translation of Richardson in 1757. Depictions of lions and of frogs are particularly haphazard (117, 155, 156, 158). The miller throws his ass into the water (#226)! 

1741 Aesop's Fables with their Morals: in Prose and Verse, Grammatically Translated.  Illustrated with Pictures and Emblems.  Hardbound.  London: J. Hodges.  DK 7500 from Norlis Antivariat, Oslo, July, '14.  

"Together with the History of His Life and Death.  Newly and Exactly Translated out of the Original Greek."  This edition was first published by Francis Eglesfield in London in 1651 (Bodemann #71.1) and then by Philiips Rhodes and Taylor in London in 1715 (Bodemann #71.2).  Bodemann calls both this edition and the latter a "leicht veränderter Nachdruck."  The full-page frontispiece shows Aesop with animals.  Bodemann registers 213 fable and 31 "vita" illustrations, always just before the appropriate text.  Metzner, who did the listing, notes the varying quality of the various streams of illustration here.  The first elements in the book are an AI of the fables and a chronological T of C of the life.  The fables are numbered.  The woodcuts are surprisingly rudimentary.  Those that rise above this description include FC (17); "The Dog Invited to Supper" (213); "Aesop and Xanthus' Naked Wife" (333); and "The People of Delphi Cast Aesop from a Cliff" (369).  Some are attractive in their elementary way, like "The Swallow and Other Birds" (26); TB (137); "The Fox and the Goat" (179); and "The Mother Ape and Her Two Sons" (263).  This book represents my most serious purchase during the European trip of 2014.  I was happy to find it in Norway, where the offerings were particularly slim.  Each fable adds a poem in rhyming couplets to its prose story and moral..  "The Rape of the Lock" (1751) is bound in at the book's end.

1741 Fables in English and French Verse Translated from the Original Latin of Gabriel Faerno. Texts of Gabriel Faerno, translated by Charles Perrault. English by Claude Du Bosc? With One Hundred Copper-Plates (by Claude Du Bosc). Marbled boards. London. Printed for Claude Du Bosc. £175 from London Antiquarian Book Arcade, Ltd., Oct., '97.  Extra copy without title-page for $35 from Goodspeed's, Boston, April, '89.

Bodemann 119.1. This is the first English-French bilingual edition of Faerno. Faerno's Latin verse fables were first published in 1563, two years after his death. The preface here gives a lively account of their history and standing. Perrault first published his French translation of Faerno in 1699. See comments on these fables in my edition without title page, which I have listed as "Fables in English and French" under "1780?". This 1741 edition contains two volumes in one. There is thus new pagination and a new T of C at the beginning of the second volume, which contains Books IV and V. In all there are five books with twenty fables in each. Du Bosc's copper engravings, very bright and clean here, are derived especially from Gheeraerts. Narrator and artist are at their best in "The Fox and the Mask" (I 9), "The Fly and the Race-Horses" (II 4), "The Fox changing his Wish" (new to me, II 13), SS (III 6), "The Woman and the Doctor" (IV 1), "The Fox and the Hedge-Hog" (IV 18), "The Thief and his Mother" (V 14), and "The Fox and the Eagle" (V 18). There is the usual problem here with lions' faces. After examining this book, I took a close look at a book which lacks a title-page. I had listed it earlier under "1780?" and given it the title "Fables in English and French." There may be several references to it in various places in this catalogue. The closest examination I can do finds no difference between the books. It is, I am now convinced, a worn copy of this book. I will keep it in the collection and add here the comments I had made on this volume then: "The Drowned Wife" (I 31) makes sense of LaFontaine's difficult fable. The fox here leaps for the "raisins." "Mercury and the Statuary" (IV 5) is well told. The fables in the early books range from 8 to 14 lines, but are longer in the later books. This copy is heavily annotated and corrected. Dedication to Mrs. Boyle. Further good engravings include "The Ass and the Wolf" (II 6), BC (IV 4), "The Fox" (IV 10), "The Fox, the Ass, and the Lion" (IV 11), "The Dog, the Cock and the Fox" (V 8), and MSA (V 20). In this last fable, the clown throws his ass over the bridge.

1741 Fables in English and French Verse Translated from the Original Latin of Gabriel Faerno. Charles Perrault. With One Hundred Copper-Plates (by Claude Du Bosc). Hardbound. London: Claude Du Bosc. $65 from Behr's Books & Bazaar, San Antonio, TX, through eBay, Nov., '11.

Bodemann 119.1.  Here is a third copy of this fine book.  This copy lacks the first page of the dedication immediately following the title-page.  This copy's covers have separated but are present.  As I wrote of the good copy found in 1997, this is the first English-French bilingual edition of Faerno.  Faerno's Latin verse fables were first published in 1563, two years after his death.  The preface here gives a lively account of their history and standing.  Perrault first published his French translation of Faerno in 1699.  This 1741 edition contains two volumes in one.  There is thus new pagination and a new T of C at the beginning of the second volume, which contains Books IV and V.  In all there are five books with twenty fables in each.  Du Bosc's copper engravings are derived especially from Gheeraerts.  Narrator and artist are at their best in "The Fox and the Mask" (I 9), "The  Fly and the Race-Horses" (II 4), "The Fox changing his Wish" (new to me, II 13), SS (III 6), "The Woman and the Doctor" (IV 1), "The Fox and the Hedge-Hog" (IV 18),  "The Thief and his Mother" (V 14), and "The Fox and the Eagle" (V 18).  There is the usual problem here with lions' faces.  Earlier I had found a book which lacks a title-page.  I had listed it earlier under "1780?" and given it the title "Fables in English and French."  There may be several references to it in various places in this catalogue.  The closest examination I can do finds no difference between the books.  It is, I am now convinced, a worn copy of this book.  I will keep it in the collection and add here the comments I had made on this volume then: "The Drowned Wife"  (I 31) makes sense of LaFontaine's difficult fable.  The fox here leaps for the "raisins."   "Mercury and the Statuary" (IV 5) is well told.  The fables in the early books range from 8 to 14 lines, but are longer in the later books.  This copy is heavily annotated and corrected.  Dedication to Mrs. Boyle.  Further good engravings include "The Ass and the Wolf" (II 6), BC (IV 4), "The Fox" (IV 10), "The Fox, the Ass, and the Lion" (IV 11), "The Dog, the Cock and the Fox" (V 8), and MSA (V 20).  In this last fable, the clown throws his ass over the bridge.

1742 Fables By the late Mr Gay, Volume the Second. Illustrations by Hubert Francois Gravelot. The Second Edition. Hardbound. London: J. and P. Knapton and T. Cox. $125 from Edward Pollack, August, '00.

I had just finished cataloguing several Gay editions when I received an offer from Edward Pollack for a set of two second editions, one each of the two volumes of Gay's fables. I am delighted to have this good copy of Volume II. I find the Gravelot illustrations strong. They take up the full page and remind one of Oudry's work. It may be that Hobbs' use of it (71) has prejudiced me in its favor, but I find "The Man, the Cat, the Dog, and the Fly" (69) among the best. See her good comments there. The frontispiece of Gay's grave-monument (pictured with Bodemann 110.5) seems to be missing. This is bound uniformly with the second edition of the first volume which I bought with it. It has a green cloth spine over green boards.

1743 Aesopi Phrygis et aliorum Fabulaequorum nomina sequens pagella indicabit ..., pluribusque auctae & diligentius quam antehac emendatae ; cum indice locupletissimo.  Hardbound.  Bassano del Grappa/Venice: Jo(hannes). Antonius Remondini.  $599 from Scott Schilb, May, ‘21.  

As Scott notes, the volume is complete: [4], 5-279, [9].  The vellum binding is tight and secure.  5¾" x 3".  The Remondini publishing family was famous, starting with Giovanni Antonio (+1711), moving through the publisher named here, also Giovanni Antonio (+1769) and others; the firm went out of business in 1860.  This is the only Remondini in Bodemann.  We have one other, for which I have guessed a date of 1757.  I noticed several dittos among this little book’s illustrations.  The illustration that fits for “De Asino et Equo” on 70 did not fit for “De Asino et Lupo” (64).  The same illustration of two boys occurs on 61 and 228.  Bodemann apptly comments, by contrast with the forerunner of this edition: “Kaum Wiederholungen.”  The 76 illustrations are doubly framed.  They seem to be uniformly a little larger than 2” x 1½”.  On 154 the footprints going into the cave are well presented, but the illustrator struggles with the lion’s face.  There is a typical FC on 240.  On 260 there are two hares, but is there a tortoise?  We have four related publications in the collection, for which I have established or guessed dates of 1757, 1777, 1780, and 1781. These all fit in the family of the "Aesopus Dorpii," first done in Italy by Remondini in Venice around 1550.   The sixteenth century members of this family appear in Bodemann #31.  The problem of misapplied and repeated images seems to have occurred heavily in our 1780 edition.  My comment on our 1757 Remondini mentions this very edition of 1743.  And now we have it!  The AI at the end takes up nine pages.

1743/2010 Aesop Naturaliz'd: in a collection of fables and stories from Aesop, Locman, Pilpay, and others. The fifth edition, with the addition of above fifty new fables. Paperbound. London/La Vergne, TN: D. Midwinter and A. Ward/Ecco Print Editions. $17.75 from amazon.com, July, '10.

This is a standard versified Aesop from the eighteenth century featuring some one-hundred-and-eighty fables. Because it lacks all illustration, it is not in Bodemann. The "naturalized" of the title refers, I believe, to the rendering into English of the fables. My online dictionary offers this third meaning for "to naturalize": "to introduce or adopt (foreign practices, words, etc.) into a country or into general use: to naturalize a french phrase." Perhaps the most engaging part of this book for me is the preface of three pages. I find it endearing and true to the fable form. As the author has diverted himself by creating them, he intends to offer readers "some little pleasure." Those who look down on these fables should try creating a fable themselves. They would find it as hard to make a good fable as most people do to practise the fable's moral! Fables form an easy and pleasant way to instruct, all the more when they are in verse. Further, fables correct people's faults without offending the guilty. A person passes sentence on his own folly before he reflects what he is doing. A final reason for a fable is that it is short and aims to teach us one point at a time. Here a picture is worth a thousand words. The author does not expect to please everyone; he is not altogether pleased with the collection himself. "The worst may please some, and the best will not please all." In any case, he professes that he meant well. This "printed on demand" book is more carefully done than some others I have received.

1743/2018 Fables Gravées Par Sadeler, Avec Un Discours Préliminaire Et Les Sens Moraux En Distiques.  Aesop.  Paperbound.  Hachette Livre.  $27.12 from Pbshop through ABE, July, '18.

This is a print-on-demand xerox copy of the 1747 original.  I picked it up to compare with the 1689 Sadeler edition I bought form Scott Schilb.  The illustrations here of the 139 fables are fascinating.  They have strong resemblances to Gheeraerts, I believe.  As these books go, this is one of the better sets of reproductions.

1744 Cent Fables en Latin et en François, choisies des Anciens Auteurs, Mises en Vers Latins Par Gabriel Faerne et Traduites par Mr. Perrault. Avec de nouvelles Figures en Taille-douce (Claude Du Bosc). Nouvelle Édition. London: C. Marsh, T. Payne, et al. £150 from Nicholas Goodyer, London, July, '99.

Bodemann #119.3. Du Bosc took his 1741 English/French edition and made it into a 1743 Latin/French edition (Bodemann #119.2). Here new publishers one year later present a reprinting of that edition. See my comments under "1741" and "1780?". This edition contains, as did the 1743 Du Bosc edition, a good deal of material beyond the fables, including the preface of the London editor, the carmina and opuscula of Faerno, dedications, letters, and testimonia. There is at the beginning an "Index" (T of C) giving a full listing of materials, but its ordering of materials seems confusing. I understand it only if one removes "G. Faerni centum Fabulae" and "Index Fabularum" and puts them at the bottom of the list. There is a simple T of C of fables, the promised "Index Fabularum," at the book's very end. The order of fables here is different from that in my copy of the 1741 edition. Further, they are numbered not in books but sequentially from 1 to 100. Thus I 1 there is XXXV here. The plates are indeed the same ones used in Du Bosc's 1741 edition, including for example the comically small donkey-pelt carried by the horse in XVI on 40. Both covers have separated, and the spine is crumbling. The book is split between 90 and 91. While "Astrologus" on 168 is numbered LXXIII, "L'Astrologue" on 169 is (incorrectly) LXXIV, just as "Leo & Vulpes" is correctly numbered LXXIV on the next page. This beautiful old book needs a preservationist!

1744 Fables for the Female Sex. (Edward Moore.) Illustrations by F. Hayman. First edition? London: R. Francklin. £45 at Henry Pordes, London, May, '97.

See my comments under the 1744/83? reprinting of these 16 fables. I count this book something of a find. The bookstore mentioned it to me on my second visit during this brief stay in London. They did not know who had written it. (It has two cuts in the title page, the lower perhaps to remove the name of a former owner.) I noted the date, made an unaccepted offer of £30, went home and looked up the date in my own records and noted that 1744 was indeed the date of Moore's first edition. I presumed therefore (and still do) that this is that first edition. I immediately called to reserve the book. Two trips back to get it were frustrated by an explosion and a bank holiday, respectively, but I left a note, and they were good enough to send it to me. The illustration pages are often slightly damaged, but usually without loss to the strong illustrations. In a few there is a tear affecting the image itself: VIII (47), XI (67), XIII (81), and XVI (149). My favorites are IX (55), "The Farmer, the Spaniel, and the Cat" and XIV (89), "The Sparrow, and the Dove."

1744 Raccolta di varie favole, Vol. I.  Giorgio Fossati.  Hardbound.  Venice: Carlo Pecora.  $282.40 from Zubal Books, Cleveland, April, '23.

This set of three volumes (out of 6) was a real find.  Though there are small drawbacks to these three volumes, Fossati volumes sell for much more.  I was lucky to happen upon a half-price sale.  The chief drawback in this volume involves red coloring of some plates: larger pink tint in some, small sections (particularly mouths) in deep red in others.  The coloring is generally not intrusive; the engravings are still lovely.  They are similar to the work of Oudry for framing and classical backgrounds.  Among the best of the illustrations are WS (X); "A Sheep Crowned with Flowers and a Shepherd" (XVII); "The Stag at the Pool" (XVIII); "The Satyr and the Traveler" (XXIV); "Armored Animals" (XXVII); and "Lion, Wolf, and Fox" (XXXIV).  "Armored Animals" receives my overall prize: well executed!  As this short list suggests, the book brings together well-known fables of La Fontaine with lesser known and perhaps even just created stories.  A new fable to me: presents a lion in sheepskin (XXVIII).  Illustration pages are not printed on the verso.  There is a bilingual T of C at the front of the book.  44 pages.  7¾" x 10¼".

1744 Raccolta di varie favole, Vol. 2.  Giorgio Fossati.  Hardbound.  Venice: Carlo Pecora.  $282.40 from Zubal Books, Cleveland, April, '23.

This set of three volumes (out of 6) was a real find.  Generally, Fossati volumes sell for much more.  A quick look finds several volumes on sale through AbeBooks for $1750 apiece.  I was lucky to happen upon a half-price sale.  This volume, 7¾" x 10¼", presents 36 bilingual (Italian and French) fables on 48 pages.  Each fable starts a new page.  Illustration pages are not printed on the verso.  There is a bilingual T of C at the front of the book.  In this volume, the outlines of the separately impressed illustrations are clear.  The engravings are, as in the first volume, lovely.  They are similar to the work of Oudry in their framing and their classical backgrounds.  Among the best of the illustrations are CW (3); "Stag and Vine" (6); CJ (21); TB (25); and WC (38).  I am surprised to find here my favorite fable of the ass carrying flowers and, later, manure (10).  The old woman who overworks her servants is here a young widow (40).  "Fox and Eagle" (24) receives my overall prize: well executed!  As this short list suggests, the book brings together well-known fables of La Fontaine with lesser known and perhaps even just created stories.

1744 Raccolta di varie favole, Vol. 3.  Giorgio Fossati.  Hardbound.  Venice: Carlo Pecora.  $282.40 from Zubal Books, Cleveland, April, '23.

This set of three volumes (out of 6) was a real find.  Generally, Fossati volumes sell for much more.  A quick look finds several volumes on sale through AbeBooks for $1750 apiece.  I was lucky to happen upon a half-price sale.  This volume, 7¾" x 10¼", presents 36 bilingual (Italian and French) fables on 77 pages.  Illustration pages are not printed on the verso.  There is a bilingual T of C at the front of the book.  As in Volume 1, many illustrations include a small portion carefully colored in light red.  The engravings are, as in the first volume, lovely.  They are similar to the work of Oudry in their framing and their classical backgrounds.  Among the best of the illustrations are "Stag and Horse" (17); "Wolf and Sculpted Head" (28); and WL (72).  The man frustrated with a god but finding cash inside his statue is operating here in a temple with a long pole (36)!  My sense is that a greater portion of the fables than in the first two volumes comes from outside the circle of La Fontaine's stories.

1744/83? Fables for the Female Sex. Edward Moore. Publisher unknown (title page missing). $25 at Bookhouse, Arlington, Oct., '91.

A book that apparently went through a number of editions. 1783 seems to be some bookdealer's guess for this one. 16 fables strong on morality, less good on story. The "fable" itself really becomes a derivative illustration of what is basically either sermon or satire. The "woman's world" that emerges here is frightening to imagine today. Frail fair thing, if she loses her honor once, a woman is doomed forever ("The Female Seducers"). Parents giving her to a man whom she has not chosen are the mother sheep giving her lamb to the wolf! Vanity claims in the last fable to rule the whole female race: "Trust me, from titled dames to spinners,/'Tis I make saints, whoe'er makes sinners." The manifold advice may not be easy to put together: character will keep a man much more than looks; clothing should make a man imagine--not see--the best; "striving nature to conceal/you only her defects reveal." A woman has fleeting beauty and gives it to a man for protection; he is grateful for the gift remembered and continues to protect her out of gratitude for what once was. Do not tease the man to whom you have said yes.

1744/67/1966/67 A Little Pretty Pocket-Book. John Newbury. Facsimile with introductory essay and bibliography by M.F. Thwaite. Dust jacket. NY: Harcourt, Brace & World. $10 at Bookworks, Chicago, Sept., '92.

This beautiful little book is the first American edition of a facsimile done in Great Britain in 1966 from the 11th edition of 1767. An extensive introduction stresses that Newbury was following Locke's revolutionary philosophy. One result was that amusement was announced as a (new) goal for this piece of children's literature. Traces Newbury's fascinating life and career as a publisher. "Aesop's Fables" books around his time came from Croxall and Richardson; Newbury himself also did a book of fables by Abraham Aesop, Esq. (145), which is mentioned in the final section made up of ads for Newbury's other books (141ff.). Simple woodcuts throughout; introduction points out that Bewick will soon revolutionize book illustration. The pages move through "Great A" to "Little a" and so on. At "Great X" we get four fables: "The Wolf and the Kid," "The Husbandman and the Stork," BW, and "Mercury and the Woodman" (with only 2 hatchets involved). After each there is a nice little letter of application from Jack the Giant Killer. Good proverbs on 137-40.

1745 Phaedri Augusti Liberti Fabularum Aesopiarum. Libri V. Cum integris commentariis Marq. Gudii, Conr. Rittershusii. Nic. Rigaltii, Is. Neveleti, Nic Heinsii, Jo. Schefferi, Jo. Lud. Praschii, et excerptis aliorum. Curante P.B. Ed. tertia emendatior, et majoris in quarto Ed. Indice aucta. Peter Burman. Hardbound. Leiden: Samuel Luchtmans. £ 85 from Ruth Kidson, East Sussex, UK, Sept., '00. Extra copy with missing spine for $15 from Goodspeed's, April, '89.

Here is one of the classics of this collection. Carnes 217. Lamb speaks warmly of the standard which Burman set with his variorum edition containing the comments of previous critics. The present volume is a third edition of a work Luchtmans first put out in 1727 (Bodemann 90.2). "To this day Burman's edition of 1727 is the only complete commentary on Phaedrus and has not been superseded" Lamb vi). There are two parts, separately paginated: 60+398 and 250+70 pp. The first part contains copious notes under the text of the five books. Then comes an appendix of other Aesopic fables (367-98). The second part consists of notes from three commentators, followed by indices on the text, notes, and authors cited. In the charming frontispiece, Phaedrus and the muse look up upon Aesop and the animals inhabiting a stage just above and behind them.

1745  The Fables of Phaedrus translated into English prose, as near the original as the different idioms of the Latin and the English languages will allow. With the Latin text and order of Construction on the opposite page; and critical, historical, geographical, and classical Notes in English. Joseph Davidson, translator. London: Printed for Joseph Davidson. $120 from Serendipity, Berkeley, Feb., '97.

This book, bound in leather, is in surprisingly good condition. Besides the notes, which seem generally to use a good deal of parallels from classical texts, there is a prose paraphrase next to each Latin text. There is an English AI at the back. Mentioned in Carnes' bibliography of editions of Phaedrus.

1746 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par Monsieur de La Fontaine avec un Nouveau Commentaire, Vol. I.  (Pierre) Coste.  Engravings (after) Francois Chauveau.  Hardbound.  Paris: Prault pere.  $299.50 from Scott Schilb, Nov., '19.

This is a strong, very early La Fontaine.  Coste's first edition in Bodemann is in 1743.  This edition is thus only three years later.  But that 1743 edition did not use the copper engravings of Chauveau as this does.  My sense is that these are engravings done after Chauveau, rather than by him -- and mirror copies at that.  They are well done.  Many of these illustrations are signed "F.C. Jr."  The engravings by the way seem to have been printed separately from the texts.  One can see the indentation around many of the images.  I was delighted when I found the match to Bodemann #124.1 but struggled to find a clear statement of Prault pere as the publisher.  That is indicated on none of the title-pages in either volume, but it does appear at the bottom of the last page of Volume II.  Together the two volumes contain 240 engravings and vignettes.  Leather binding.  Marbled endpapers.  4" x 7".  This is another star in the collection!  Strong frontispiece of La Fontaine seated among the animals.  The T of C for this first volume is on xlvii-lij.  One of my choices for an outstanding engraving in this volume is FK on 106.

1746 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par Monsieur de La Fontaine avec un Nouveau Commentaire, Vol. II.  (Pierre) Coste.  Engravings (after) Francois Chauveau.  Hardbound.  Paris: Prault pere.  $299.50 from Scott Schilb, Nov., '19.

This is a strong, very early La Fontaine.  Coste's first edition in Bodemann is in 1743.  This edition is thus only three years later.  But that 1743 edition did not use the copper engravings of Chauveau as this does.  My sense is that these are engravings done after Chauveau, rather than by him -- and mirror copies at that.  They are well done.  Many of these illustrations are signed "F.C. Jr."  The engravings by the way seem to have been printed separately from the texts.  One can see the indentation around many of the images.  I was delighted when I found the match to Bodemann #124.1 but struggled to find a clear statement of Prault pere as the publisher.  That is indicated on none of the title-pages in either volume, but it does appear at the bottom of the last page of this volume.  Together the two volumes contain 240 engravings and vignettes.  Leather binding.  Marbled endpapers.  4" x 7".  This is another star in the collection!  The volume includes Coste's fable, "La Cigale trouvee parmi une foule de Sauterelles," after La Fontaine's own epitaph for himself and an "Avis du Libraire" and before the closing T of C on 393-399. A not-very-successful lion engraving is on 239.  One of my choices for an outstanding engraving in this volume is "The Companions of Ulysses" on 265.

1746 Select Tales and Fables with Prudential Maxims and other Little Lessons of Morality in Prose and Verse Equally Instructive & Entertaining for the Use of Both Sexes, Vols. I-II. Benj. Cole, Engraver. Hardbound. London: For T. Osborn and J. Nourse. £18.22 from Stuart Caulfield, Edinburgh, through eBay, August, '12.

This fine little book has one of those titles that goes on forever. It continues: "Wherein Their Foibles as well as Beauties are presented to their View in the fairest & most inoffensive point of Light...The whole embellished with threescore original designs, expressive of each subject, neatly engraved on copper plates." The pattern in this children's fable book is for sets of four pages. First there are two pleasing almost square illustrations on the first left page, followed by two texts on the first right page. Then follow two adaptations on the second left page, with the second right page conveniently left blank as the verso of the next set of illustrations. The illustration pages and their blank versos are not counted in the page numbers. The prolog is adapted from "Phoedrus." Each volume has 80 pages. After the thirty fables in the first volume, there are three sets each of prudential maxims, first in prose and then in verse, arranged alphabetically for easier memorizing. "Art polishes and improves Nature. Beauty is a fair, but fading Flower." Next come "Fifty Select Counsels or Rules of Life Without Regard to Alphabetical Order." Young readers of this book certainly got enough admonitions! Next come "The Precepts of Pythagoras" and "The Golden Verses of Pythagoras." Finally there are fifty-one "Select Historical Reflections on Various Subjects, Equally Instructive and Entertaining." Volume II follows a similar pattern. Good sample illustrations are those facing 15 in Volume I, FG and "The Farmer and His Sons," and facing 9 in Volume II, "The Fox and the Eagle" and WC. They add "J. Wale Delin." to "B. Cole Sculp." My best find comes from the second book: "The Apple and the Horse-Turd" (23). The two lie on a road when a rainstorm sweeps them away. The horse-turd says to the other "See how we apples swim!" Fable XXVIII in Volume II is a poor man's version of Lessing's great fable about the scholar asked if he does not feel alone who answers that he has never felt so alone as in this conversation. Here the student answers the clown "Thy company is worse than none" (27). The date for the book is given on the second volume's title-page. A possible pre-title-page for the first volume may be missing. Pages 3-10 of the first volume are missing. Not in Bodemann. 

1747 Aesop's Fables. With Instructive Morals and Reflections Abstracted from all Party Considerations, Adapted To All Capacities; and design'd to promote Religion, Morality, and Universal Benevolence. By Mr. Richardson. Hardbound. London: J. Rivington, R.Baldwin, L. Hawes, W. Clarke, R. Collins, T. Caslon, J. (S?) Crowder, T. Longman, B. Law, R. Withy, J. Dodsley, G. Keith, G. Robinson, J. Roberts, T. Cadell. $130.27 from Minglewood Books, Chesterfield, VA, August, '05. 

This is my third early copy of this book. I have dated the first of my other two copies "1740/53?" It was published by Wilson and Spence in York and it is Bodemann #131.2. I dated my second copy "1740/61?" It was published by Longman, Hitch, Hawes et al in London. Neither is what Bodemann lists as her first edition (#131.1), published by J. Osborne in London in 1749. My favorite private collector's notes state "the Richardson bibliography lists a first edition of [1739-1740], a second edition of 1747 (?) and another edition of 1773." He himself has an edition which he dates to c1776; he notes that this edition substitutes as the publisher W. Nicol for R. Withy and W. Stuart for J. Roberts who died in 1776. I had read this latest copy of mine as dated, on its title-page, "1777." As I have looked more closely, I believe that it is actually "1747." That dating would make sense of the remark made just above about the edition of c1776, for my present edition includes the names "R. Withy," and "J. Roberts," for whom that edition substitutes "W. Nicol" and "W. Stuart," respectively. The latter died, according to that note, in 1776. He would not have been a publisher of a "1777" edition. So I say a cautious "Eureka!" This seems to be the 1747 second printing. This copy has no front cover and begins with the title-page. The title-page's illustration includes some brown and blue coloring. There is some coloring of the illustrations, e.g., those facing 32 and 57. Other than that, the illustrations have survived quite well; all 240 are present. Only part of Story #239 survives, and #240 and any pages following at the book's end have been lost. There is significant foxing at various points in the book. The back cover is detached. The typos that I found in the York edition of c1753 are not here; this edition shares with the London edition of c1761 the spelling of "fewel" in #212. This is a lovely, fragile little treasure!

1748 Fables Nouvelles Mises En Vers. Avec La Vie d'Esope, Tiree De Pultarque & D'autres Auteurs.  (Henri) Richer.  Hardbound.  Paris: Chez Barrois.  $187.49 from Resource Books, East Granby, CT, through AbeBooks, Sept., '22.

It is seldom that I can say "I regret buying this book."  I can say that here.  I had thought that this was a La Fontaine that had escaped me thus far.  It seems a strong response to La Fontaine, not least in having two parts that add up to twelve books, preceded by a life of Aesop.  After a non-fable masquerading as a fable about Thetis, Achilles, and Chiron, Richer presents a clever about-face of FC.  The crow wonders as he sees the fox eating some lard.  He points to nearby ducks as a much better meal.  The fox follows the lead and chases the ducks -- in vain.  As he returns he finds the crow eating his lard.  Turn-about is fair play!  Shapiro's "The Fabulists French" gives Richer only an early dismissive remark (xiv) and presents none of his fables.  As I recall, I was aware of a much more expensive copy of this work and was delighted to see it offered at a lower price.  In this case maybe I was the fox chasing some ducks!  Bodemann #129.1 reprints the frontispiece: Athene has a mirror and a poet presents a manuscript.  3¼" x 5½".  52 + 314 + 6 pages.

1748/54  Phaedri Augusti liberti Fabulae. Ad manuscriptos codices et optimam quamque editionem emendavit Steph. And. Philippe. Accesserunt notae ad calcem. Vita Phaedri a J. Scheffero. De Aetate Phaedri a Gerar. Jo. Vossio. Judicia et testimonia de Phaedro. Appendix Fabularum a M. Gudio. Fabulae latine, pluraeque ejusdem cum Phaedri fabulis argumentis. Flavii Avieni Fabularum Aesopiarum liber unicus, accurante S. A. Philippe. L. Annaei Senecae ac P. Syri Mimi Sententiae et notis J. Gruteri. Edited by Stephan Andreas Phillipe [de Prétot]. Paris: Typis Josephi Barbou. $12 at Serendipity, Berkeley, Feb., '97.

Contains a wealth of good things, including the life of Phaedrus by Scheffer (v-xiv), an 'Indiculus editionum Phaedri' (xxxiv-xxxvii), the 1747 edition of Avianus: 'Flavii Aviani Fabularum Aesopiarum, liber unicus', (149-204), and the Sententiae of Seneca and Publilius Syrus. First published both by Barbou and by Grangé in 1748. Carnes notes this 1754 reprint, but says it has 395 pages, whereas this book, like the original he describes, has only 305 after the initial xlviii. At 147-8 there is a leaf lacking; in this copy is pencilled "a blank leaf taken out." Carnes mentions a title-page for Avianus that may have been 147. Formerly in the University of California Bancroft Library, and, before that, in the library of Henry Swinburne. All this for $12, and I found it by chance among the Classics books while she was writing up the cost of my other purchases! Twelve small but engaging illustrations at the beginning (and sometimes ends) of books of fables.

1749 Le Nouvel Esope: Fables Choisies. Paperbound. Paris: Chez la Veuve Delormel et Fils. €60 from Librairie Hatchuel, Paris, August, '02.

Twenty-six rhyming verse fables on 52 pages. Marbled paper covers. No introductory or concluding material other than a colophon on the last page indicating various permissions and a registration. There are printer's decorations on the title-page and first page, and the first initial is done dramatically. The accent in the title apparently belongs on the "nouvel." These are new fables after the fashion of Aesop. In the first fable, "L'Aigle et le Pie," the eagle ends up killing the magpie prophet who predicted bad things for the eagle but long life for the magpie. Do not anger the powerful! The second fable has a humble swan refuting the proud claims of the peacock to be the most beautiful. We all have some points of beauty but lack others. So it goes, through fables featuring respectively two books, a monkey and a fox, and love and absence. It is wonderful to have an older book like this in the collection, but these fables so far do not excite my interest. One of the fables here, "Le Mouton, et le Loup," appears in The Fabulists French (74) as the work of Delaunay, though the work referred to there is Recueil de Fables from 1732. Delaunay died in 1751. "Le Mouton, et le Loup," Shapiro rightly comments, is "typical of the conventional wisdom found in many another animal fable.." Delaunay seems to have written several theatrical pieces using fables. Might this book be a collection of some of those fables that first appeared in his plays?

1749 Mythoi Aisopou: Aesopi Fabulae Graeco-Latinae. Cum novis Notis, nec non Versione emendata. Editio, prioribus antehac editis correctior; Et ad Usum Juventutis Regiae Scholae Etonensis accommodata. Etonae: J. Pote. $85.50 at McNaughton's, Edinburgh, July, '92.

Unusual bilingual reader: The 144 Greek fables are given first, with helpful and extensive Latin notes right after the individual Greek fable. After 122, we start over again with the very same 144 fables in Latin, this time without notes, on 92 pages. There follow two pages of revealing advertisements for Pote's books for Eton's young scholars.

1749 Recueil de Fables Choisies Dans le Goût de M. De la Fontaine. Nouvelle Edition Revue, corrigée & augmentée. Hardbound. Paris: Chez Ph. N. Lottin & J.H. Butard. $100 from Kindel McNeill, Houston, through eBay, July, '05.

The title continues "Sur de petits airs & Vaudevilles connus notés à la fin pour en faciliter le chant." Not in Bodemann. Six books of fables on 322 small (2½" x 5") pages. Notice that both the texts and the organization of the fables is original. Though the book follows La Fontaine, the six books of fables seem not to be organized according to the pattern of La Fontaine's twelve books, and the texts seem redone with a special eye towards providing an appropriate meter for the music. After the texts, there is a ten-page AI. Following a royal permission to publish comes finally the special feature of this little book: 32 pages of musical notation, apparently fitted to the fables. These pages contain some hundred different musical arrangements, usually of two or three lines. The notation system in these pages is surprisingly close to ours. The introduction to each fable in the volume indicates which "air" is appropriate for it.

 

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