Book Illustration, Taxes and Propaganda

• AcknowledgementsList of illustrations1. Introduction: the French illustrated book in the eighteenth centuryi. Introductionii. The Compagnie des Fermiers générauxiii. The Fermiers and the authoritiesiv. The publication of the Contes et nouvelles en versv. The fate of the Contesvi. Editions of the Contes before 1762vii. Illustrated editions of the Contes before 1762viii. The genesis of the illustrationsix. Questions of interpretationx. Some historical conclusions2. The illustrations to La Fontaine’s Contes et nouvelles en vers, volume 13. The illustrations to La Fontaine’s Contes et nouvelles en vers, volume 24. The lessons of the Eisen illustrationsi. General observations on the interpretation of the illustrationsii. The presentation of the plates – themes and variationsiii. The Contes as a rococo bookiv. Nudity in French illustrated books of the eighteenth centuryv. The place of illustrations in French eighteenth-century booksvi. The audience for the illustrationsvii. La Fontaine and the idea of personal freedomviii. The theme of freedom as manifested in the Contesix. The Fermiers généraux, freedom and conventional valuesx. The assertion of the Fermiers’ freedom in the illustrationsxi. Revelations: the role of curtains and clothingxii. The significance of the 1762 Contes in the history of the eighteenth-century French illustrated bookxiii. EpilogueList of works citedIndex

[This] book is both thoughtful and daring. Few authors possess the necessary erudition and methodological ingenuity to situate a work such as the 1762 Contes, so suggestively within old-regime politics and finance. [...] Adams succeeds in producing a book that says as much about the history of book illustration as it does about the larger cultural and political development of eighteenth-century France.- SHARP News