ANONYMOUS Deux Contes de Cette Année. Amsterdam, Chez Desbordes, 1700
Two volumes in one, small octavo; a fine copy in contemporary red-brown morocco, spine gilt in compartments, all edges gilt, blue silk markers.
First edition of this rare work containing a pair of fantasies and fables: they are satires on contemporary mores and characters, this no doubt accounting for both the anonymity and the dubious publication details. The title is not recorded by Barbier and we have not found a satisfactory reference to it in the standard bibliographies.
The anonymous narrator, by 'un heureux hazard', discovers a manuscript entitled 'L'Etat de l'Empire des Fées'. Published in two books, the first follows the adventures of King Binkbinc, and the second 'la Gageure des Fées'. The noble spirits have been brought into a state of degeneration through their relationship with humans, and many of the laws of their wise founder Solomon have been ignored. Thus, the society of the fairies is unusually regimented, and part of the work is dedicated to a discussion of the various classes, in doing so showing the work's debt to the utopian tradition.
$A2850
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