"THE MOST FAMOUS TRANSLATION OF THE FABLES INTO ENGLISH IS BY ONE OF THE GREATEST POETS OF THIS CENTURY"

MOORE, Marianne, translator. The Fables of La Fontaine. New York: The Viking Press, 1954. Large octavo, original red cloth, uncut and unopened; original acetate, original black glazed-paper slipcase. $450.

Signed limited first edition, number 125 of only 400 signed copies, of which 300 were issued to the trade. A fine copy.

"The most famous translation of the Fables into English is by one of the greatest poets of this century, Marianne Moore… Her translation is, in a way, a tour de force: she rendered every one of La Fontaine's lines of irregular length with all the rhymes in the same place and exactly the same number of syllables. She was inspired to undertake this extraordinary project by W.H. Auden, who observed that Moore's prosody was based, not on accent as in standard English verse, but idiosyncratically on counting the number of syllables per line, as in French; she also wrote wonderful animal poems, like "The Frigate Pelican" and "The Pangolin," and she had a profound feeling for moral observation" (Charles Rosen, "The Fabulous La Fontaine" in The New York Review of Books, December 18, 1997).

Largely unopened, minor expert repairs to slipcase. A fine signed copy.