1844 Scarce French Edition - Charles Perrault's Fairy Tales, Les Contes des Fées
An attractive and scarce 1844 illustrated edition of Charles Perrault’s celebrated fairy tales, preserved in its richly decorated original publisher’s binding and retaining nine hand-colored steel-engraved plates together with numerous wood-engraved illustrations.
Author: Charles Perrault.
Title: Les Contes des Fées.
Publisher: Paris: Amédée Bédelet, Éditeur, 20 rue des Grands-Augustins, [1844].
Edition: Scarce illustrated edition of 1844, with illustrations after designs by the Pauquet brothers.
Language: French.
Pages: viii, 159 pages.
Size: 9.5 x 6 inches.
Binding: Good restored original publisher’s black morocco-grain cloth binding, elaborately decorated in gilt and colors, with a large polychrome pictorial vignette to the front board, ornamental gilt border, gilt and colored decoration to the spine, blind-stamped decoration and gilt central ornament to the rear board. All edges gilt. Showing expected rubbing and wear, with sympathetic restoration, while retaining its striking original appearance. Protected in a removable mylar cover.
Content: Good content, complete as to text, with age toning, foxing and occasional staining throughout, as shown. Includes a preliminary notice on the life of Charles Perrault followed by eleven tales: Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, Les Fées, La Barbe-Bleue, La Belle au bois dormant, Le Chat botté, Cendrillon, Riquet à la Houppe, Le Petit Poucet, L’Adroite Princesse, Peau-d’Âne, and Les Souhaits ridicules.
Illustrations: Illustrated after designs by the Pauquet brothers with 9 of the 10 called-for full-page hand-colored steel engravings, including the colored frontispiece, together with a large number of wood-engraved illustrations and vignettes throughout the text. The edition was originally issued with ten colored steel engravings.
Estimate: $175–250 USD.
The book:
This handsome mid-nineteenth-century edition presents the classic tales of Charles Perrault in a particularly appealing form, combining richly colored steel engravings with numerous woodcut illustrations incorporated directly into the text. Published in Paris by Amédée Bédelet in 1844, the volume includes many of the foundational stories of the European fairy-tale tradition, among them Little Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Sleeping Beauty, Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and Little Thumb. The Bibliothèque nationale de France records the edition with the same viii, 159-page collation. BnF Catalogue
The survival of the original highly decorative publisher’s binding is particularly attractive. The gilt and polychrome cover design, colored steel engravings and abundant wood illustrations make the volume a characteristic example of luxurious French juvenile publishing of the 1840s. This copy retains nine of the ten full-page colored plates called for, an absence reflected in the estimate.
The author:
Charles Perrault (1628–1703) was a French writer and member of the Académie française whose collection of traditional tales became one of the foundations of modern fairy-tale literature. His versions of stories such as Cendrillon, Le Petit Chaperon rouge, La Belle au bois dormant and Le Chat botté helped establish forms that have remained familiar for more than three centuries.
Originally rooted in oral storytelling, Perrault’s tales combine fantasy, social observation, wit and explicit moral lessons. Their extraordinary endurance made them a favorite subject for nineteenth-century illustrated editions, of which this early Bédelet production is an especially decorative example.
The illustrators:
The illustrations are after designs by the Pauquet brothers, a French family of artists and illustrators active in nineteenth-century publishing. The National Library of Scotland specifically attributes this edition to the Pauquet brothers and identifies Hippolyte Louis Émile Pauquet among its illustrators.
Their combination of finely detailed narrative scenes, fashionable costume and theatrical composition is particularly well suited to Perrault’s stories. The hand-colored steel engravings provide the principal pictorial highlights, while the numerous wood engravings woven through the text give the entire volume a richly illustrated character.