Post-Fontaine Fables
[HÉRISSANT, Louis Théodore.]
Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleures fables depuis La Fontaine. Paris, Lottin le jeune, 1771.
12mo, pp. xviii, [2], 556; woodcut ornament to title, woodcut headpiece, typographic decoration; light spotting in places, but largely clean and fresh throughout; bound in nineteenth-century half navy morocco with marbled sides, spine gilt in compartments and lettered directly in gilt, edges marbled; very slight rubbing to joints and extremities.
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Le fablier françois, ou élite des meilleures fables depuis La Fontaine.
First edition, rare, of what has a claim to be the first comprehensive collection of French fables from the period after La Fontaine, assembled by the diplomat, lawyer, and historian Louis-Théodore Hérissant (1743–1811).
Collecting together fables from writers both famous (Voltaire, Boileau, Rousseau) and obscure, the work includes many hitherto unpublished fables, in many cases offered to Hérissant by their authors for this anthology, as well as others that had appeared in publications such as the Mercure de France. In all, there are 323 fables, divided into sixteen sections, including a final section of ‘Apologues Orientaux‘, kept separate as a comparatively recent genre (although there is little of the Orient about them). The volume concludes with brief biographical sketches of the (known) authors.
Hérissant was the author of various works including a biography of Malebranche, an essay on taste, a comedy, and an historical survey of German literature; he studied German law and was appointed secretary of the legation to the Diet of Regensburg in 1772.
Outside continental Europe, OCLC finds only three copies in the US (Brown, Duke, Stanford), and one in the UK (London Library).