FABLES AND TALES FROM LA FONTAINE IN FRENCH AND ENGLISH 1734 FIRST EDITION

[LA FONTAINE, Jean de]. Fables and Tales from La Fontaine in French and English. Now First Translated. To which is prefix'd, the Author's Life. London: printed for A. Bettsworth and C. Hitch, and C. Davis, M DCC XXXIV. [1734].

The first published collection of La Fontaine in English translation. Leather-bound. Hardback. Octavo (200 x 125 x 25 mm). Pp. [10], iii-xxvi, [6], 293 [i.e.295], [1]. [Pp. 175-176 are repeated in pagination]. Signatures: a-b⁸ c⁴ B-T⁸ U⁴. Parallel French and English texts. Handsomely bound in recent quarter leather, smooth spine with gilt lettering, marbled paper-covered boards. Title-page device, decorative initials, and ornamental head- and tail-pieces. Condition: GOOD. Collated complete. Binding tight and secure with the hinges intact. Slight rubbing to some extremities. Interior lightly toned in places, a little erosion to title-page, 18th century newspaper clipping tipped-in verso title-page, coupe of leaves with slight chipping to fore edge, else very good.

Notes: A parallel text edition in English and French, and the first appearance in English of the collected fables. It was preceded in 1703 by Mandeville's delightful verse translation of just 29 of the fables. This edition presents 100 fables in English prose with the French verse on the facing page. The translation is accurate, and intended for use in schools, but inevitably loses much of the character present in the original verse. A possible candidate for translator of this might be Daniel Bellamy the Elder, who had brought out an edition of Gay's Fables the previous year, and Phaedrus' Fables in 1734 (also published by Bettesworth & Hitch and designed for schools). Whoever he was, the timing of his publication is no coincidence, with a burgeoning market for new school texts. The work is dedicated to Miss Eliza Harcourt, of Pendley, near Fring (i.e Tring) in Hertfordshire, from whose family the anonymous translator appears to have received a degree of patronage. He identifies himself as being from Plaistow in Essex, and addressing Miss Harcourt and her sisters he hopes that, 'one circumstance which I believe, will please you in the following sheets, is, the lovely prospect they exhibit of the rural retreat'. A view that would have been shared by Defoe who in his Tour (1724-1726) described the estate at Pendley as 'a delightful retirement to a man who wants to deceive life in an habitation which has all the charms nature can give, with a large common rounded by a wood behind it'. ESTC T154423.