Abbé Bignon - Les aventures d’Abdalla - 1773

[BIGNON, ABBÉ JEAN-PAUL]. — THE ADVENTURES OF ABDALLA, OR HIS VOYAGE TO THE ISLE OF BORICO (THE HAGUE / PARIS, MUSIER, 1773, 2 COMPLETE VOLUMES). The Hague & Paris: J.B.G. Musier, 1773. 2 volumes in-12. Full contemporary calf, spine with raised bands ornamented. Beautiful eighteenth-century edition complete in two volumes of this very famous oriental and wonderful adventure novel. Although presented as a "Translation from Arabic," this work is in reality an original creation by Abbe Jean-Paul Bignon, librarian to the King. He interweaves numerous embedded side tales (in the manner of Scheherazade) featuring gnomes, genies, sultans, monstrous animals, and magical sea voyages to the Fountain of Youth. This illustrated 1773 edition is distinguished by the care given to the copperplate engravings, which wonderfully render the exoticism and the magic of Oriental palaces. A fine copy preserved in its original full brown marbled calf binding. Spine with raised bands ornamented with gold sprigs and fasces, with the title and volume labels preserved. Mild signs of wear to the heads and corners, bindings remaining very solid and in good condition. Interior in good freshness on laid paper, with scattered age foxing. Complete with the frontispiece of the amphitheater and the plates out-of-text that are carefully engraved. A high-ranking scholar and nephew of the minister Pontchartrain, Abbe Bignon composed this masterpiece of the literature of the imaginary to entertain the Court of the Sun King, while slipping in a subtle moral about the traps of the quest for eternal youth. The frontispiece plate showing the hero facing a monstrous beast with opened jaws in an ancient amphitheater is one of the most striking compositions of the fairy-tale novel of the eighteenth century.

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