FABLES DE LA FONTAINE AVEC LES DESSINS DE GUSTAVE DORE

Paris: Librairie de L. Hachette et Cie, 1868. A very early printing of the edition illustrated by Gustave Doré. Illustrated by Gustave Doré; portrait and 84 full-page illustrations; 248 finely engraved and fully decorative head and tailpiece pictorial designs throughout. Double plates at 35, 65, 93,117, 385, 395, 455 and 741. Folio, in a French binding of crimson cloth signed Hachette at the foot of the spine, the spine lettered in gilt within compartments separated by blind tooled banding. The upper cover decorated in all over pictorial designs and lettering gilt, and the rear cover in blind. A very attractive bindings, the book showing some slight cracking to the upper hinge running for approximately 2.5 inches. Internally there is some evidence of water staining to the edges of a some gatherings at the beginning of the volume and there is some intermittent, but not terribly obtrusive foxing to a number of the pages. A RARE AND IMPORTANT BOOK AND ONE OF DORE’S BEST. With his full-page engravings Gustave Doré does his best work with great dramatic flare. The countless smaller illustrations round out the book and make it a truly outstanding publishing endeavor.
La Fontaine was famously known as one of the important literary group of the Rue du Vieux Colombier which included Racine, Boileau and Moliere. By the 1680s, he was known as one of the first men of letters in France. The FABLES were especially praised by well-known critics and it were well received by the general public. This issuance represents a very lovely printing of La Fontaine’s cherished fables in the original French. Along with the fables are a brief life of Fontaine and a life of Aesop.