AESOP.
Æsop’s Fables with His Life: in English, French and Latin. Newly Translated. Illustrated with One hundred and twelve Sculptures. To this Edition are likewise added, Thirty one New Figures representing his Life. By Francis Barlow.
London: Printed by H. Hills jun. for Francis Barlow, and are to be sold by Chr. Wilkinson, Tho. Fox, and Henry Faithorne, 1687.
Second edition (first published in 1666). Virtually all copies of the first edition were destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666. This is the first edition to contain the additional thirty-one full-page engraved plates.
Folio. [2, blank, verso engraved pictorial title], [2, title, verso blank], [2, dedication], [1, To the Reader], [1, full-page engraving of Aesop surrounded by animals and birds], 40, 40, 17, 2-221, [2], [1, blank] pp. Full page engraved plate of the arms of the Earl of Devonshire and thirty (without the suppressed plate No. 17, which is often missing) full page engraved plates by Thomas Dudley after Francis Barlow illustrating the life of Aesop, and 110 half page engravings in the text. The thirty additional plates are bound after the forty pages of English text. These plates were engraved in 1678 - this second edition is the first to contain these superb engravings. One or two small inoffensive tears. Some very minor stains or browning to some leaves, overall a good copy of this beautiful edition. Bound in 18th Century calf, red morocco spine label, some wear to joints and headcaps…
For this second edition of his magnificent production, Barlow commissioned Aphra Behn, then at the height of her popularity as a playwright, poet and translator, to write a quatrain summarizing the fable and to be engraved on the 110 plates illustrating the fables. In order to substitute Behn’s verses for those of Thomas Philipot (d. 1682), the lower area of the plate needed to be burnished down and the new verses engraved onto the plate in place of the earlier ones. “The workman doing the burnishing feared damaging the bottom border of the design above the verse: in many places traces of the tops of the letters in Philipot’s top lines remain. In a few instances a small new plate for the new verse had to be inserted.”(Hodnett).
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