Title: Fables choisies, mis en vers par M. de la Fontaine. Nouvelle édition
Description: <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">12mo.
pp. lxxii, 432, [2] (wanting one leaf (pp. 427-28, concluding the ‘Table’ and
beginning the ‘Addition’). Signatures:
a-c<sup>12</sup> A-S<sup>12</sup></span><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Bound in contemporary mottled calf.</span></p><p></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">First
and only Barbou edition, as edited by Jean-Félicissime Adry, and of
inexplicable rarity. Due to their immense and immediate popularity from 1668
onward, the fables of La Fontaine were subjected to pastiche and imitation
during the poet’s lifetime (d. 1695) and throughout the next century, often
leaving open the question of which ‘additions’ to the canon were indeed fakes
or forgeries. Charles Nodier, who himself edited the ‘Fables choisies’ in 1818, considered the problem in his classic
‘Questions de littérature légale,’
and settled for dismissing Simien Despréaux de la Condamine’s ‘Suite des oeuvres posthumes de M. de la
Fontaine’ (1798) as being ‘unremarkable’ imitations, but these derive at
least in part from much earlier Lafontainiana.</span></p><p></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;">This
little edition of 1806 is specifically cited by Nodier (and by Nodier’s recent
editor Jeandillou: see Bib# 4103638 /Fr# 1640, p. 73) as containing – and in
fact questioning – two suspect fables published in 1780 by Pierre-Louis d’Aquin
de Château-Lyon (1720-1796), who said he found them in a portfolio. The 1806
editor, Adry, regarded these (properly) as questionable, but was reluctant to
reject them outright, giving his reasons on pp. 430-32. Yet again, however,
both texts can be found in versions of the Fables long preceding d’Aquin and Adry: the situation remains
murky, and in need of bibliographical attention beyond that of Nodier, Quérard,
and other 19<sup>th</sup>-century editors.</span></p><p></p>

<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0.0001pt;text-align:justify;line-height:normal;"><span style="font-size:11.5pt;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></p>

<span style="font-size:11.5pt;line-height:107%;font-family:Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://catalyst.library.jhu.edu/catalog/bib_5547603" rel="ugc nofollow"><span style="color:#4B64FF;background:#FFFFFF;">Click here to view the Johns Hopkins
University catalog record.</span></a></span>