French Fables for Italian Readers
COUPÉ DE SAINT-DONAT, Alexandre; Jean de LA FONTAINE; Camillo UGONI, translator.
Favole di A.L.M. Coupé ed alcune di La Fontaine recate in Italiano … Brescia, Nicolò Bettoni, 1808.
8vo, pp. 77, [1, blank], [2]; printed on blue paper, in parallel French and Italian on facing pages; the odd mark, but a very good copy; bound in contemporary orange and black pelle variegata boards, paper label to spine lettered in black; a little rubbed, headcap chipped; front free endpaper inscribed ‘All’egregio, e culto amico suo | Francesco Treccani | Erculea Calpe della Lingua Fosca | Il Traduttore’ (see below).
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Favole di A.L.M. Coupé ed alcune di La Fontaine recate in Italiano …
First edition of Coupé’s fables, rare, printed on blue paper and inscribed by the translator to Francesco Treccani.
An officer on Napoleon’s Egyptian campaigns, Alexandre Coupé de Saint-Donat (1775–1845), while passing through Brescia when part of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, gave nine of his tales to Ugoni to have published, desiring them to be translated into Italian; Ugoni decided to add some fables from La Fontaine to introduce Italian readers to this particularly French genre. A friend of Ugo Foscolo, Ugoni would later accompany him into exile in 1823 due to the hostile political situation in the Austrian Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia.
Provenance: Inscribed to Francesco Treccani, a lawyer and translator from Brescia; his edition of the works of Solomon Gessner was published in Brescia in 1817. His manuscripts, now in the Biblioteca Civica Queriniana in Brescia, contain essays on travel, reading, language, and the art of translation; the inscription addresses him as ‘the Herculean pillar of obscure language’ (trans.).
Binding: The distinctive pseudo-marbling is known as pelle variegata (‘variegated skin’), no doubt in reference to its development from the techniques of tree-marbled calf.
We have located one copy in the US (Princeton) and none in the UK.