The Works of Mr. Francis Rabelais [TWO VOLUMES]

Octavos. xvi, 474, [2]; xvi, 462, [2]. 9" x 6" PLAYING WITH GIANTS Remembered as the first truly great French prose writer, sixteenth-century novelist François Rabelais pressed into the grotesque and satirical throughout his novels. In his most well-known set of novels, Gargantua and Pantagruel, featured in this collection, Rabelais followed two giants, Gargantua and his son Pantagruel, as Pantagruel travels on mock heroic journeys while attending the University of Paris. Their adventures culminate in Pantagruel's friend's pursuit of the Holy Bottle, a fortune-telling bottle that will instruct the giants on whether they should marry. The tales were originally censored for obscenity, as Rabelais played with words and satirized French customs. W. Heath Robinson, the beloved early twentieth-century illustrator, leans into the distorted in this 1921 collection of Rabelais's works. First published in a larger format in 1904, Robinson speckled the pages with monstrous heads and eerie character sketches, bringing life back into the giants' tales. This edition also includes several of Rabelais's shorter satirical stories and a collection of his letters. Significantly toned and rubbed spines with some rippling to v. 2 spine, moderate foxing condensed to fronts and rears of text blocks, still very good. Overall tight and square copies. Publisher's full cream cloth, gilt ruled, with fleur-de-lis and spines decoratively stamped in gilt, teg, ribbon markers, lacking dust jackets.…