Fables choisies mises en vers par Monsieur de La Fontaine

A rare composite seventeenth-century edition of The Fables of La Fontaine, richly illustrated with 257 engraved copper headpieces adorning nearly every fable. These illustrations are the third copy made after François Chauveau's engravings, and are notably larger than their predecessors.

Contemporary brown calf, spines with five raised bands decorated in four compartments in gilt featuring stylized acanthus leaf motifs, tawny morocco label, red speckled edges, gilt palmette and foliate edge-roll, marbled endpapers.

Discreet restorations to spines, joints, and corners, gilding faded on board edges, raised bands, and headcaps, stain to inner margin affecting the first thirty pages of volume one.

Inside the copies : in volume 1, small losses to first blank endpaper, second blank endpaper missing; in volume 2, pagination error at p. 83, leaves I3 and G3 missigned as I2 and G5. 

With two engraved frontispieces, the first by R. de Hooge dated 1699, the second, original, depicting Aesop surrounded by animals. This copy also contains a portrait of the fabulist after H. Rigaud engraved by E. Desrochers, and several headpieces and tailpieces throughout.

Complete with the epistle to Monseigneur le Dauphin, the author's preface, the life of Aesop the Phrygian, the author's notice for the second collection of The Fables, the discourse to Madame de la Sablière, and the dedication to Madame de Montespan.

This edition appeared three years after La Fontaine's death. Still rooted in the Grand Siècle, it presents the fabulist's most important creations: The Grasshopper and the Ant, The Raven and The Fox, The Frog that wished to be as big as the Ox, and The Wolf and the Lamb.

This printing is largely based on a Dutch clandestine edition of 1693, produced by the Huguenot Daniel de La Feuille. The eleven books present in the first edition appear in this edition. However, unlike the first edition, this version includes a fifth part entitled Nouvelles Fables choisies, mises en vers par M. de La Fontaine, et autres plus célèbres auteurs français de ce temps, bearing the Amsterdam address of the clandestine publisher La Feuille. 

Several unsigned texts in this fifth part would be wrongly attributed to La Fontaine in the following decades. A large portion of these fables are actually the works of contemporary fabulists, such as Trousset de Valincour, Regnier, Lejay, Saint-Ussans, Furetière, and Fraguier.

As C. A. Walckenaer rightly notes in his preface to the 1822 Fables, it is surprising that Jean-Baptiste Girin was granted permission to publish this fifth part, as it had been "removed" from La Feuille's edition for its disparaging remarks about Louis XIV.

A fine late seventeenth-century copy of The Fables of La Fontaine, containing the third copy of François Chauveau's engravings. This edition is of both historical and literary interest as it is the source of several misattributions of fables to La Fontaine.