Aesop. Aesop's Fables with his Life: in English, French

Aesop. Aesop's Fables with his Life: in English, French and Latin, additional engraved title, engraved arms of the dedicatee, William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, frontispiece and 31 plates by Thomas Dudley, including the 'indecent' plate 17 with small ink doodles near the offending part but not obscuring it, 110 engraved illustrations by Francis Barlow, occasional short tears but generally a fine, clean and crisp copy, bookplate of Sir William Eden, Bart., early 19th century russia, ruled in gilt and blind, sympathetically rebacked, [Wing A703], folio, by H. Hills jun. for Francis Barlow, 1687.

⁂ A very good copy of Barlow's famous edition, his masterful illustrations enhancing the verses of Aphra Behn.

Sir William Morton Eden, 7th Baronet of West Auckland and 5th Baronet of Maryland, of Windlestone Hall, County Durham, was father of Prime Minister Anthony Eden, later Earl of Avon. He was an eccentric and irascible man, a brilliant huntsman, talented watercolourist, and early collector of impressionist pictures. In the words of his son Sir Timothy: '...he was induced neither by poverty nor obscurity of birth, nor by timidity - for he was physically and morally fearless - nor by the slightest vestige of self-discipline, to restrain the exuberance of his feelings. Nature had showered upon him with an uncontrolled hand her gifts and her curses alike, and without control he received them all, and without control he expended them.' He had a celebrated legal dispute with Whistler over a portrait he had commissioned of Lady Eden. See: 1) Timothy Eden, The Tribulations of a Baronet, (Macmillan, 1933, 2nd Edition The Spredden Press, 1990) 2) Whistler, James McNeill, Eden versus Whistler: The Baronet and the Butterfly. A Valentine with a Verdict, Paris and New York, 1899.