Suzanne Ballivet’s illustrations for a selection of La Fontaine’s fables are characteristic of her output at this particularly busy time in her professional life – carefully designed, well-executed, and in this case very colourful.

This selection includes just eighteen of La Fontaine’s 239 short stories, including ‘The Devil of Papefiguière’, suitably shocked by the sight of a woman’s hairy vulva, and King Candaule, a cautionary tale of trying to prove the beauty of your wife by inviting the head of your palace guard to check out her bon points. Wife and guard inevitably find each other terminally irresistible and the king ends up dead in bed.

La Fontaine’s Contes was published by Éditions de la Madeleine in a limited numbered and boxed edition of 3,000 copies.