AESOP (PHAEDRUS, trans.).
Phaedri, aug[usti]. liberti fabulorum Aesopiarum libri V. Notis illustravit in usum serenissimi principis Nassauii David Hoogstratanus, accedunt ejusdem opera duo indices ...
Amsterdam, François Halma, 1701. 4to. With an engraved frontispiece, an engraved printer's device on the title-page, a folding portrait of the dedicatee and 18 engraved plates with 6 roundels on each plate illustrating the 99 fables and 5 prologues, 3 portraits of Aesop and tailpieces and historiated initials. Contemporary half calf, brown sprinkled paper sides, brown spine label with title in gold, red sprinkled edges. [32], 160, [84] pp.
€ 2,500
Gorgeous edition of the 94 Aesop fables with 5 additional fables found by the German philologist and classical scholar Marquart Gudius, together with his extensive and scholarly notes, printed in two columns below each fable, the whole prepared by David van Hoogstraten (1658-1724), the conrector of the Latin School of Amsterdam (1694-1722). Apart from being a prolific Dutch and Neo-Latin poet, he was an esteemed linguist and philologist who edited a number of classical authors. His present splendid Phaedrus edition, intended for and dedicated to the young Stadholder of Friesland and Groningen, the "crown-prince" Johan Willem Friso of the Nassau family, is magnificently printed in the style of the French "in usum Delphini" editions made for Le Grande Dauphin.
With the bookplate of John Blackburne on the front paste-down. Spine damaged, front hinge weak, paper sides worn and partly torn off, some small marginal tears in the portrait of Johan Willem Friso, but otherwise in good condition. Bodemann, 94.1; Fabula docet 42; Landwehr, F163; Schwabe/Barbier, pp. 69-70.
Related Subjects:
