Les fables d'Ésope, avec cent vingt-trois figures d'après Barlow. Collection de gravures piquantes et d'apologues ingénieux pour l'amusement et l'instruction de la jeunesse.

Paris: chez Henri Tardieu, Libraire, Rue et Maison des Mathurins, [1810] First edition from this publisher. Some OCLC records bear dates of 1801 or 1802 for this same edition, though the date on the title-page is "an X," i.e., 1810. The illustrations are copied from the original images by Barlow, which were first published in 1666. This attractive edition of Aesop features the stories retold for the "amusement and instruction of the youth. Early marbled boards with green roan spine stamped in gilt. . Two volumes in one, oblong octavo. . With 123 full-page engravings by Francis Barlow (including the two frontispieces, one for each volume). Quite clean throughout despite occasional dampstaining and foxing. A very good, wide copy of a scarce edition. Barlow (ca. 1626 – 1704), a painter, etcher, and illustrator, is known as "the father of British sporting painting" and was "Britain's first wildlife painter, beginning a tradition that reached a high-point a century later, in the work of George Stubbs. He was furthermore a pioneer in the history of comics by creating A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot (c. 1682), a picture story about the life of Titus Oates and the Popish Plot, which is told in a series of illustrated sequences where the story is written underneath them and the characters depicted on those images use speech balloons to talk" (Tate Britain website). Barlow's edition of Aesop was published by William Godbid in 1666. Few copies of the first edition remain, as many of them were destroyed (along with the printer's premises) in the Great Fire of London the same year the edition was published.