Fables de La Fontaine, Tome II

Abstract

See my comments on Volume I. There seems to be rather heavy foxing at the very beginning of this book. Again, the full-page wood engravings, like MM (32), come off the page vibrant! A newly discovered head piece is that for Les Femmes et le Secret (76), in which sellers at a market are lined up in the background as ready recipients of the whispered secret from the foreground. A new favorite full-page illustration is L'Ours et l'Amateur des Jardins (88). I think I can see the fly very distinctly! The match of the two illustrations for Les deux Pigeons (148) is very nice, since the stance of the woman copies that of the pigeon that we see on the facing page. The head piece of Les deux Chevres (298) gives a rarely pictured impression of the unequal outcome as one goat pushes the other off the narrow bridge. In L'Ecrivisse et sa Fille (317), mother and daughter are equally stooped over. The full-page illustration of L'Amour et la Folie (329) has become detached. Doré is at his best with night-scenes as in Le Renard et les Poulets d'Inde (342) and Le Renard anglois (354). At the back of the volume are again alphabetical tables of the large gravures and of the fables of this second volume. The book belonged previously to Caroline Tappan.