Humor Grandville, J.J.: Vie privée et publique des animaux (Illus.) (French) v2 3 July 2009

[Jellby]

J.J. Grandville is the pseudonym of French caricaturist Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard (1803-1847). He met success in his time with drawings depicting human figures with animal faces. Well known are his illustrations for the fables of La Fontaine, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, or Robinson Crusoe. His work is considered to have influenced other illustrators like Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland) and the surrealists.

"Vie privée et publique des animaux" (Private and Public Life of the Animals) was published in journal form between 1840 and 1842. It is a collection of short stories written by popular French writers of the time, and beautifully illustrated by Grandville. The stories have animals as their main characters and are mostly satirical. The contributors are:

H. de Balzac, Louis Baude, Émile de la Bédollière, P. Bernard, Gustave Droz, Benjamin Franklin, Jules Janin, Édouard Lemoine, Alfred de Musset, Paul de Musset, Mme Ménessier-Nodier, Charles Nodier, George Sand, P. J. Stahl, Louis Viardot.

The editor and leader of this project was Pierre-Joules Hetzel (1814-1886), and influential editor, writer and general cultural personality in the mid-19th century France. He was the editor of Balzac's "La comédie humaine", Baudelaire's "Les fleurs du mal", and many other important authors of the time, and notably he was the "discoverer" of Jules Verne whose complete works also published. In this book here, under the pseudonym "P. J. Stahl", he wrote the prologues and epilogues of both volumes, as well as many short stories inside. Together with Grandville as illustrator, Hetzel/Stahl gave consistency to this project as editor and writer.

I could not find the text online, but different editions are available from Google Books and Gallica as PDF scans. I based this ebook on the Gallica version (the "augmented" edition of 1880). The illustrations are cleaned up, and the text is re-typed and proofread, but it's likely that many mistakes remain (it would be great if some native French could check it, especially the accents...).

Due to the length of the book and the amount of work involved, I've decided to publish now the first part (slightly more that 50%). When I finish the second part I'll publish the complete book. (It's complete now)

Any kind of feedback is welcome.

EDIT (v2): Full version published. Finally!

(previous download count: 82)

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[Jellby]

I finished copying this book. All the chapters and illustrations are there! Uploaded v2 and updated the description with some info about Hetzel/Stahl.

An ePUB version is in the to-do list, but it may take some time, since each chapter is a bit different in formatting. Besides, I've found a better source for the illustrations, and I'd like to update them too, but all in due time.

Thanks to Zelda_pinwheel for her help, by the way