Contes et nouvelles en vers

First printing of the most celebrated edition of the Contes, known as the Fermiers Généraux edition.

It was printed in 1,000 copies on Auvergne laid paper and reserved for the 65 Fermiers généraux, some of whom financed the publication themselves.

This edition concludes with five tales not by La Fontaine: “La Couturière,” “Le Gascon” and “La Cruche” (by Autereau); “Promettre est un et tenir est un autre” (by Vergier); “Le Rossignol” (attributed to Lamblin or to Du Trousset de Valincourt); and the “Dissertation sur la Joconde” (by Boileau). For the remainder, the edition follows the definitive texts of the 1685 and 1696 editions.

The illustration is considered Eisen’s masterpiece, and probably Choffard’s as well: 2 portraits (La Fontaine and Eisen), 80 superb full-page engravings executed in intaglio by Eisen, Aliamet, Baquoy, Choffard, Flipart, Lemire, and others, 4 vignettes and 53 tailpieces and vignettes by the master ornamentalist Choffard, the last of which contains his own portrait.

A fine copy, with very wide margins (180 mm), in a contemporary red morocco binding in excellent condition, with exquisite endpapers; the plates in volume II for “Cas de conscience” (p. 143) and “Le Diable de Papefiguière” (p. 149) are in unbacked proofs.

Both volumes are complete with the notices to binders.

“Among the illustrated books of the eighteenth century, this edition of La Fontaine’s Contes, known as the Fermiers Généraux edition […] is the most beautiful and pleasing overall; it is, moreover, Eisen’s masterpiece. Thus, although fairly common, it is highly sought after and commands a high price, especially when the impressions are of the finest quality and the binding elegant and well executed” (Cohen, 306).

The edition was planned within the Société des Fermiers généraux as early as 1758, the engravers setting to work the following year on the eighty designs by Charles Eisen, who had taken six years to complete them. A dozen or so copies, known as “presentation” copies, were sumptuously bound, most of them by Derome le Jeune. Several of these, it may be noted, are bound with the exact same endpapers as those found in the present copy (the Couppel du Lude copy; the Esmerian copy; the Firmin Didot copy; the Rahir copy…), suggesting a common workshop.

Light foxing, sometimes uniform, to a number of gatherings.

From the library of Joël Dupont (bookplate).