Fables nouvelles, dédiées au Roy

LA MOTTE (Antoine Houdar de). Fables nouvelles, dédiées au Roy.
Paris: Grégoire Dupuis, 1719.

4to (288 × 223 mm). (3) ff., XLII, 358 pp., (3) ff. Full red morocco, covers decorated in Du Seuil style, spine richly gilt in compartments with double borders, central tools and cornerpieces, gilt lettering, gilt date at foot, gilt edges, double gilt fillet to board edges, wide gilt turn-ins; binding signed R. Petit (19th century).

First edition, “rare and sought-after” (Cohen), on large paper, with the engravings in first state.
This is the first true book illustrated by Claude Gillot (1673–1722), the celebrated master of Antoine Watteau. According to Dacier, it is the first genuine French illustrated book of the eighteenth century created by a painter.

The copy contains:
– a full-page frontispiece engraved by Tardieu after Coypel;
– a title vignette by Simoneau after Vleughels;
– 101 engraved vignettes by Gillot, Coypel, Edelinck, Picart and Ranc.

The plate L’Horoscope du Lion (p. 331) appears before Gillot’s signature, confirming the first state.

Composed in 1719 in a spirit of deliberate provocation, these Fables nouvelles mark a rupture with the Classical tradition. Unlike La Fontaine and his continuators, La Motte does not draw on Greco-Latin models; instead, he innovates, adopts abstract concepts as characters, and aligns his verse with the intellectual concerns of his century. The Discours sur la Fable ranks among the foundational texts that nourished Enlightenment thought across Europe.

Light wear to corners and headcaps; paper evenly toned, with a few pale whitish traces on initial leaves, likely from an old, unsuccessful washing attempt. Otherwise a very handsome copy, with fine impressions of the plates, in an attractive nineteenth-century morocco binding.

From the library of François-César Le Tellier, Marquis de Courtanvaux (1718–1781), grandson of Louvois, minister of Louis XIV, colonel in the Royal Regiment during the Bohemian and Bavarian campaigns, and later member of the Académie des sciences.

References: Cohen 548–549; Brunet III, 1326; Tchemerzine V, 438.