Colored Phaedrus (1 results)

137 x 87 mm. (5 3/8 x 3 3/8"). Two volumes. Attractive contemporary black polished calf by Ducastin (stamp-signed in gilt on spine), covers framed with gilt fillets and blind floral toll, spine panels with gilt lettering or repeating gilt tools, turn-ins with floral gilt roll, marbled endpapers, all edges gilt. Housed together in a modern blue buckram drop-back box lined in felt. WITH 111 ENGRAVINGS, ALL WITH CONTEMPORARY HAND COLORING, consisting of frontispiece portrait of the dedicatee, Fanny Beauharnais, extra engraved title page in each volume, and 108 plates illustrating the fables. Cohen-de Ricci 799. See also: F. K. Turgeon, "Fanny de Beauharnais: Biographical Notes and a Bibliography," Modern Philology, vol. 30, no. 1 (August, 1932), pp. 61-80. One plate with thin half-inch black ink mark to image, isolated minor foxing, but A FINE COPY, clean and fresh internally, with richly colored plates, in virtually unworn lustrous bindings. This is a charming bilingual edition of the short moral tales by the first century Latin fabulist Phaedrus, in beautifully preserved contemporary bindings and copiously illustrated with hand-colored engravings. Much of the work is modelled after Aesop, although the fables of Phaedrus generally contain a more ample flavoring of social satire than those of his famous predecessor. The present edition presents the text in both French and Latin, along with illustrations by Parisian engraver Pierre Joseph Moithey, which Cohen-de Ricci notes are in the style of Simon and Coigny's engravings for the "Fables de Fontaine." The careful contemporary hand-coloring here adds a great deal of interest and refinement to the work, and the colors have not faded in the least. Also of interest is the dedication to Fanny de Beauharnais (born Marie-Anne-Françoise Mouchard, 1737-1813), a socialite and poet, as well as the godmother to Queen Hortense of Holland (daughter of the Empress Josephine by her first husband). After separating from her own husband, Beauharnais hosted a salon that became one of the most important in Paris in the decade leading up to the Revolution. In the words of F. K. Turgeon, "It was here in her blue-and-silver salon that she received the extraordinarily varied crowd who were her friends, literally dirty men of letters like Retif de la Bretonne beside wealthy Polish princes and French dukes, wild revolutionaries like the Baron Cloots beside conservatives and reactionaries." Our 1806 edition is not terribly common on the market, and it is very seldom seen colored. The attractive bindings here are the work of Pierre Alexis Ducastin (1785-1860), who came from a family of printers and bookbinders dating back to the beginning of the 17th century. In the December, 2006, Christie's catalogue of the Bibliotheque Erotique Gerard Nordmann, Pierre Alexis is described as "one of the great bookbinders of [his] time.".