THE FAIRY DOLL (LA POUPÉE)

Cloth and patterned paper boards, gilt spine. Title page printed in red and black. T.e.g., all others untrimmed. Introduction by Shane Leslie. First English translation from the French by H. B. V. Bookplate affixed to front pastedown, offsetting to front and rear endsheets, slight fray to crown of spine, internally very good. Limited edition, number 928 of 1000 copies printed at the Curwen Press. Part of a series of eighteenth-century French romances published by Chapman & Hall in the 1920s. This work was first published in French in 1744, and, according to the translator's note, had not been reprinted in any language since 1782. It is the story of a fairy who transforms herself into a doll after escaping from her husband into a shop, and is thereafter taken up by an Abbé who apparently is a fop and a poor lover. La Poupée makes it her business to teach the young cleric what women really want.