Details
AESOP. Les Fables d'Esope et de plusiers autres excellens mythologistes. Edited and translated from the English by Roger L'Estrange. Amsterdam: Etienne Roger, 1714.
4° (241 x 185mm.). Title printed in red and black, engraved frontispiece (repeated as illustration on c2), 135 etched and engraved illustrations, including 22 full-page showing the life of Aesop, after Francis Barlow. (Slight old dampstaining to d1-2 and e1-2, occasional very light marginal soiling.) Old vellum, spine lettered in gilt (some wormholes at spine). Provenance: Biblioteca Sormani Andreani Verri (armorial bookplate).
The first French edition of Aesop to use Barlow's illustrations. Barlow (1646-1704) first published his illustrations in London in 1666: the depictions of the life of Aesop were added for the second edition which appeared in 1687. Hofer considered Barlow's Aesop "one of the most beautiful and handsomely illustrated books of the 17th century" (Baroque Book Illustration, no. 8). On Barlow's death, Etienne Roger purchased the copperplates, and cut them down to exclude the verses in English. Roger uses L'Estrange's standard commentary of 1692, and dedicates this book to Pierre Testas and his wife for the moral education of their children. Barlow's illustrations remained popular in France, being used in an edition by Didot in 1797 and in Parisian editions of the early 19th-century. Brunet I.96; Cohen de Ricci 350 ("assez rare").
4° (241 x 185mm.). Title printed in red and black, engraved frontispiece (repeated as illustration on c2), 135 etched and engraved illustrations, including 22 full-page showing the life of Aesop, after Francis Barlow. (Slight old dampstaining to d1-2 and e1-2, occasional very light marginal soiling.) Old vellum, spine lettered in gilt (some wormholes at spine). Provenance: Biblioteca Sormani Andreani Verri (armorial bookplate).
The first French edition of Aesop to use Barlow's illustrations. Barlow (1646-1704) first published his illustrations in London in 1666: the depictions of the life of Aesop were added for the second edition which appeared in 1687. Hofer considered Barlow's Aesop "one of the most beautiful and handsomely illustrated books of the 17th century" (Baroque Book Illustration, no. 8). On Barlow's death, Etienne Roger purchased the copperplates, and cut them down to exclude the verses in English. Roger uses L'Estrange's standard commentary of 1692, and dedicates this book to Pierre Testas and his wife for the moral education of their children. Barlow's illustrations remained popular in France, being used in an edition by Didot in 1797 and in Parisian editions of the early 19th-century. Brunet I.96; Cohen de Ricci 350 ("assez rare").