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.