Browsing by Author "Jean de La Fontaine"
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Item Fables de la Fontaine(Maison Alfred Mame et Fils, 1931) Jean de La Fontaine; R. de la NézièreThis is our fifth Nézière version of La Fontaine and one of the most interesting. Here is the history as I believe we can reconstruct it. Mame published a fine Nézière edition in 1926. It was slightly larger than this present edition, which is almost 8" x 11". It contained 60 fables on its 159 pages. It combined 16 strong full-page colored illustrations with two smaller black-and-white illustrations for every fable except one, MM. The match between the colored and black-and-white illustrations was particularly good. Front and back covers also had full-page illustrations of arches with the poet on stage on the front cover and anthropomorphized animal characters in the foreground; on the back cover, another set of anthropomorphized animal characters was in the foreground. I praised this book for its extravagant imagination. This edition was apparently exactly reprinted in 1930 in our second copy. Our third copy is an inexpensive Dutch paperback from 1979, but it coincides with the present book in presenting internally only black-and-white versions of Nézière's original illustrations. It presents only 35 fables and eliminates entirely the full-page illustrations. The fourth book is a 2001 Everyman's Library edition that reproduces both the smaller black-and-white illustrations of 1926 and the 16 full-page colored illustrations. Now I have found this 1931 edition, whose 160 pages render the full-page illustrations in black-and-white and are selective in the smaller illustrations that are included. There are significant stretches of fables toward the end with no illustration at all. Might this version be a cheaper post-stock-market-crash version? Pinterest shows many copies of the colored 1926 version but none of this 1931 version. As I have mentioned a propos of the other versions, one of Nézière's gifts is the inclusion of contemporary technology, from bicycle pumps to biplanes.Item Fables de La Fontaine(Librairie Ancienne et Moderne, 1827) Jean de La FontaineThis thick little volume (4" x 2½" x 1½" thick) has to be one of the most compact volumes in the collection. To my surprise, it is really an "Oeuvres de La Fontaine," and I wonder if a title-page to that effect might have been lost at the book's beginning. It is there before the other three volumes bound together here. The book thus contains not only all twelve books of fables in two stated volumes separately paginated (181 and 222 pages, respectively) but also two volumes of the Contes (152 and 184 pages, respectively). There is a T of C at the beginning of each of the four volumes. No illustrations.Item Les Fables de La Fontaine 10 LP Box Set Decca Rare with Book(1971) Jean de La Fontaine; Oudry, Jean BaptistThis is a combination of ten 33 rpm records with a booklet 12" x 12" explaining the records. The fable illustrations in this booklet all come from Oudry. Here is, I believe, a rare find in good condition. The only other reference on the web that offers a date is as stymied as I am, since the first record has a range of 1958-71 for its recordings. The first thing about this magnificent find is that the records are in pristine shape. The second thing is that they come in a gorgeous red cloth box. The third thing is that they also include a booklet, sixteen pages in length. The booklet moves from an essay on La Fontaine to a detailed description of the contents of the 20 sides of these records. I have not gone out of my way to include recordings in this collection, but this set seems an unusual find. I am bolstered by the fact that the online offering I mention above asks for 200 euros! This set, by the way, spent too much time in someone's basement!