Contes de fées
A rare "highly sought after" edition (Tchemerzine) of Perrault's Tales.
A very fine copy preserved in its contemporary binding.
12mo, with 1 frontispiece, XXXII and 424 pp., and 13 engraved vignettes.
Marbled calf, smooth spine finely decorated, gilt fillet on edges, marbled edges.
Contemporary binding.
137 x 90 mm.
“A foundational book marking the entry of oral art into great literature” (Marc Soriano, In French in the Text).
Rare “highly sought after” edition (Tchemerzine) of the Contes de Perrault.
Beautiful copy preserved in its fine period binding.
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Rare and highly sought-after edition, the first complete one, dedicated to the Duke of Montpensier and illustrated with 13 charming engraved vignettes at the head of each tale.
Brunet, IV, 508; Cohen, 449; Tchemerzine, V, 180; Cahoon, 97; Gumuchian, 4415.
“A rather rare and highly sought-after edition” (Tchemerzine).
“A rather rare and much sought-after edition” (Cohen).
The first “complete” edition of the most famous of all early collections of fairy tales.
This edition is actually the first “complete” edition of Perrault’s Contes comprising the eight prose tales of 1697 and the three verse tales of 1691–1694. Also included are a prose rendition of “Peau d’Ane” by an anonymous hand, and “L’Adroite Princesse” by the author’s niece, Mlle L’Heritier.
It brings together Little Red Riding Hood, The Fairies, Bluebeard, The Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots; Cinderella or the Little Glass Slipper, Ricky with the Tuft, Hop o’ My Thumb, The Clever Princess or the Adventures of Finette, Griselidis, Donkeyskin (in verse), The Ridiculous Wishes, Donkeyskin (in prose).
“Of all that Perrault wrote, nothing contributed more to his fame than a very small book to which, probably, he himself attached little importance.
The idea came to him to collect the tales that children so love to hear from the lips of their mothers and nurses, when they have been good.
He published them in January 1697, under the name of his son Perrault d’Armancourt.”.
Fame arrived with the 19th and 20th centuries and the constant admiration that Perrault’s work evokes in the United States.
The number of commentaries and studies devoted to it, the number of its re-editions, attest to an enduring success and immense international audience that place this work among the great texts of world literature.
A beautiful example of Charles Perrault's masterpiece preserved in its fine period binding.
