One Hundred Fables with Illustrations/Hundert Fabeln in Wort und Bild/Cent Fables Illustrées

Abstract

The cover reads One Hundred Fables in English, German & French. Illustrated. The sub-title on the title-page includes A New Edition in Three Languages in all three languages. If this is indeed a copy of the first edition -- and I confirm here that the publisher does check out with Bodemann's listing -- then this book is some forty years earlier than the bookseller estimated. Bodemann does not mention the frontispiece: an unusual full-page landscape of a castle with trees and animals in front of it. Its connection with fable is not immediately clear. The paper stock is thicker than one finds in most books. This copy is missing pages 5, 48, 58, and 59. There is a wormhole on 22. 47 is detached. There are a number of repairs in the book. Only right-hand pages are numbered, with one number for each fable, and each fable starts on a right-hand page with a picture. Then the three texts are in columns beneath it. Thus a number of left-hand pages following short texts have only a quadrangular frame on them. I have seen three-column works and am delighted to include this one in the collection. The texts seem to be prose adaptations of La Fontaine. It would be fun to track down their sources. There is no T of C, introduction, or index. This copy seems different from an otherwise identical copy in that only Ackermann appears on the title-page -- or anywhere -- as publisher.