2 volumes, 8vo (184 x 113). Engraved portrait frontispiece, engraved printer’s devices on title-pages, 71 (of 80?) engraved plates after Eisen, 4 large engraved vignettes most after Choffard, 60 culs-de-lampe, a few engraved head-and-tail pieces. (Dampstained in lower margin, some soiling or browning, a few tiny holes touching text.) Later calf gilt (rebacked preserving old red morocco backstrip gilt, rubbed, hinges starting). Provenance: unidentified stamps and annotations from a previous owner. 

 

Presumed pirated edition after 'Fermiers-généraux' edition of 1762. Printed only 2 years after the decadent limited edition, this edition is profusely illustrated by engravings largely after Charles Eisen. Eisen was best known for his book illustrations and vignettes, and “the most remarkable of these are the designs for the ‘Fermiers-généraux’ edition of the ‘Contes’ of La Fontaine’” though he also served as the painter and draftsman to the Kind and the drawing-master to Madame de Pompadour (Bryan, Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, p. 459). Stories and Tales in Verse was originally published by Fontaine from 1668 to 1694. He transformed fables from a variety of sources into French free verse. While the present edition was produced for an adult audience, Fontaine’s fables were quickly adapted to the educational curricula for children. See Cohen-de-Ricci 571.