This is another version of the Fables of La Fontaine, only it is in French and illustrated by Grandville, the pseudonym of Jean Ignace Gerard, a French illustrator known for transfiguring the human shape and personifying animal figures with human traits and well-suited to story telling. 

The book is 3/4 bound and has four raised bands, with gilt lettering and gilt-ruled panels on the spine, marbled endpapers, the page before the title page says it was published by Fournier (“imprime par les presses mécaniques de h fournier”), the title page has a small vignette illustrated by Grandville, followed by a full-page illustration honoring La Fontaine, two pages by by La Fontaine which had to be written before La Fontaine’s death in 1695, then a Preface, twenty-six pages on the life of Aesop (“la vie d’esope, le phrygian” ix - xxiv) and the text, which is 452 pages long and divided into six books, followed by one-page epilogue at the end. The book was also edited by Furne in Paris in 1842 and is filled with illustrations by Grandville. 

Jean Ignace Gerard (1803 - 1847), aka Grandville, was a French Illustrator, caricaturist, artist, and printmaker who was known for illustrating La Fontaine’s Fables, as well as Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Swift's Gulliver's Travels, and Cervantes's Don Quixote, and his The Metamorphoses of the Day (Les Métamorphoses du jour) was a set of 70 color lithographs (1829) which showed figures with human bodies, but the heads of various animals, from fish to elephants, all to satirize the bourgeois of Paris and human nature in general.

The first edition was published between 1838 and 1840, and this is only one volume of a two-volume set. 

The book measures 9 1/4 x 6 1/2 inches wide and has a tight binding, but there is wear on the covers and light browning in the text and on some of the illustrations. Still an exceedingly rare title and a great way to compare Gustave Dore with Grandville. 

Size: 9 1/4 x 6 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. 

#8710