Title: Histoires Prodigieuses Extraictes de Plusieurs Famaux Autheurs, 1595. A Rare and Fantastical Collection of Tales about Monsters, Demons, Extraordinary Events, and More, with Almost 100 Woodcuts
Author: Pierre Boaistuau; Claude de Tesserant; François de Belleforest; Rod Hoyer
Publisher: Antwerpen, chez Guislain Janssens
Condition: Very Good
A scarce, late 16th century edition of Prodigious stories extracted from several famous authors, divided into five books, and enriched with nearly 92 beautiful woodcuts.
A rather rare and curious work, the collection covers various tales of an admonitory or educative nature, drawn from biblical, classical or other reputable sources, meant to delight and bewilder the reader. Stories of demons, sea monsters, monstrous humans, comets, earthquakes and floods, unnatural and natural phenomena, the works are by Boaistuau, with additional tales by de Tesserant, de Belleforest, and Hoyer.
A very rare and curious work. It deals with sea monsters, Siamese twins, thunder entering a girl's mouth and exiting through her private parts, a child born half-man, half-dog, etc. The two volumes added to Boaistuau's are by Claude de Tesserant and François de Belleforest.
Many of the woodcuts are truly bizarre in nature, enhancing the impact of each tale and scenes. There are early depictions of Siamese twins, a rather shocking woodcut of a thunder creature entering through the mouth of a woman and out her vagina, monstrous, furred beings of an anthropomorphic nature and much, much more.
USTC records 13 existing copies of this edition in libraries.
One finely bound volume in 12mo, 720+(8) pages
This volume is in very good shape, with a vertical split to the front cover, with some rubbing to the binding as well. The first three leaves bear some minor restorations, and there is some soiling and staining throughout.