This is a two-volume set of La Fontaine’s Tales and Novellas, in the original French, the  title page reads “Contes et Nouvelles en Vers, Par Monsieur De La Fontaine”, corrected, augmented, and printed in intaglio (“nouvelle edition corrigee, augmentee, & enrichie de Tailles-Douces dessinees”), and it was illustrated by Romain de Hooge and published in Amsterdam in 1732 by N. Etienne Lucas, at the Golden Bible (“Bible D’Or”). 

The book are leather-bound, with five raised bands, gilt-ruled borders and gilt lettering and gilt designs in the compartments, marbled endpapers with the owner’s bookplate on the front endpapers, a full-page frontis done by Pierre Brunei (Vol I), then the title page in red and black letters, a seven-page warning about this new edition (‘“Avertissement sur Cette Nouvelle Edition”), a Preface by the author, 240 pages of text in Volume I and 285 pages of text in the second volume, followed by a Table of Contents at the rear in both volumes. (Volume I - the Tome Premier - has two pages of Contents and Volume II - Tome Second - has one page of Contents), both books have half-page engravings to begin each fable, and the two books have red top stains added by the publisher. 

The books are an anthology of ribald short stories and novellas put into verse from the prose  of La Fontaine, and the first edition was collected and published in 1665 in Paris by Claude Barbin, while La Fontaine was still alive. Romain de Hooge (1645 - 1708) was a Dutch artist, engraver, and caricaturist, and some people shy away from books written in another language, but this is written in French, the native language of La Fontaine, which we consider to be a plus, and for those who want to know, marbled endpapers were first used in books in 1655,   so this title is right near the beginning of that period. 

The books measure 6 1/2 x 4 inches wide and are in pretty good shape for their age. The spines and corners show their age on the first volume, both volumes have rubbing at the edges of the spines, there are lightly penciled notes on the front flyleaf of the first volume and light browning here and there in the two volumes, but not much - the pages are actually pretty clean - and the top stain is darker on both volumes.  

We only found three sets listed online for this title, two had both books bound in one volume and one had detached boards, and this set is completely intact and bound in two volumes, so a rare set of the Tales and Novellas of Jean de La Fontaine in the original language.  

Size: 6 1/2 x 4 in. 

#5461