Fables de Vincent de Bazinbois

Chaumont (Haute-Marne): widow Bouchard, 1803     ¶  ONLY EDITION; comprising one hundred fables in French verse, chiefly original but one translated from Phaedrus; together with a charming dedication to the author's wife and a short verse Prologue and Epilogue. The text is arranged in five books of twenty fables each; and many of these have subtitles serving as promythia, eg "Le deux chenes; ou, L'orgueil puni" (The two oak-trees; or, Arrogance punished). A nice epigraph from Diderot adorns the titlepage: "Les Fables sont devenues la nourriture et les délices des esprits les plus délicats, le plus cultives, les plus profunds."  Of Bazinbois himself almost nothing is known. In 1787 he published a volume of Fables nouvelles . . . ; suivies d'un Traite sur la bienfaisance, under a (false) London imprint: Only one edition of this is known; and copies are preserved at Paris, Nancy, and Poitiers. From footnotes in the present volume we learn that the author lived at Brainville-sur-Meuse, that he was a corresponding member of the Société d'Agriculture, Commerce, Sciences et Arts du Département de la Haute-Marne, that he had made an unpublished verse translation of Phaedrus, and that he was about to publish a volume of Contes moraux, in verse. VERY RARE.   ||| Collation: 12mo (180 x 110 mm untrimmed): Pp [i-viii] [1] 2-167 [168]. Wood-engraved vignette (11 x 20 mm: a farmhouse) on title.  Binding: Original tan laid-paper wrappers unlettered, old handmade DUST-JACKET comprising two fragments of marbled machine-made paper, lettered by hand.  Condition: Largely UNOPENED, extremities somewhat worn, withal a very good copy.  References: OCLC 43802519 (Princeton only). Unknown to La Bédollière. Not in the Bibliotheque Nationale (Paris), nor in the French union catalogues.   ||| For further details please contact Jay Dillon  Rare Books + Manuscripts, as below.  Pour plus de détails, veuillez contacter Jay Dillon  Rare Books + Manuscripts, comme ci-dessous..