The Fables of La Fontaine (inscribed by the translator with photograph)

New York: The Viking Press, 1954. First trade edition, inscribed association copy. Hardcover. Very Good/Good. SIGNED. 342pp. Large octavo [24 cm] Blue cloth over boards with a gilt stamped title on the backstrip and La Fontaine's initials stamped in blind on the front board. The extremities are gently bumped and rubbed, and the cloth at the head of the spine is slightly frayed. A magazine cartoon has been mounted to the rear pastedown, and the rear endpaper has been discolored by a laid in newspaper clipping. In a price-clipped dust jacket, with pronounced sunning to the spine (title still bold), moisture staining to the folds of the flaps on the reverse, and 4 pieces of tape backing small edge tears. A translation by the American modernist poet Marianne Moore. This copy has been inscribed by Marianne Moore to socialite Lila Tyng, with a photo of the translator inscribing this very copy mounted to the front free endpaper. Moore's inscription states, "For Mrs. Lila Tyng (Marianne Moore is honored that / Mrs. Tyng cares to give this book a home / Marianne Moore / August 13, 1968." The person who photographed Moore has made a notation below her photograph. Lila Tyng was the first wife of publisher Henry Robinson Luce, founder of Time, Inc.