Fables de La Fontaine, avec notes, et soixante-quinze figures gravées sur bois [Vol. 1-2]

Title: Fables de La Fontaine, avec notes, et soixante-quinze figures gravées sur bois [Vol. 1-2]

Author: La Fontaine, Jean de

Publication: A Paris: Chez Crapelet, 1830.

Description: La Fontaine's fables, complete in two pocket-sized volumes and illustrated with 75 half-page wood engravings. In binding by Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen, Anne Frank's best friend, with binder's printed paper label on front pastedowns. In full olive goatskin over boards, with five raised bands on the spine, two lettering pieces, single-line fillet frames in each compartment, olive endpapers, top edge gilt, multicolor endbands, and maroon ribbon marker. 4.25 x 3 inches; Vol. 1: [4], xxxij, 336 pages; Vol. 2: [4], 464 pages. Moderately sunned spine, moderate foxing to the interior, and dampstain at fore-edge, but still an attractive copy. Very Good.

Jacqueline Sanders-van Maarsen (1929 -) is best known for being Anne Frank's best friend. In June 1942, Anne wrote in her diary: "Jacqueline van Maarsen, whom I only just got to know at the Jewish Lyceum, is now my best friend." She is also referred to as Jopie in the diary. The van Maarsen family survived the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, when Jacqueline's formerly Catholic mother convinced the authorities that they were not Jewish and that the J" should be removed from their identity cards. 

After the war, van Maarsen was one of the first people to whom Anne's father Otto Frank showed Anne's diary. The diary includes a goodbye letter from Frank to van Maarsen. After the war, van Maarsen trained in bookbinding in Paris and became an award-winning bookbinder. She successfully hid her identity as Frank’s best friend for decades, embracing the anonymity of working in her binding studio and using her married name Sanders. After noticing that some individuals were taking advantage of Anne Frank’s story for their own benefit, van Maarsen felt obliged to go public with her identity and "to write for the one who could no longer write." She then reclaimed the van Maarsen name and wrote five books about Anne Frank and the dangers of antisemitism.