'Issued a few decades after the invention of printing, this French rhymed treatise on table manners is a courtesy book addressed to children of humble as well as noble rank. It has been argued that this is the first printed book (apart from elementary Latin grammars) intended to be read specifically by children. The unknown author of Les Contenances offers his advice in the form of quatrains, each beginning "Enfant ..."' (Pierpont Morgan Library, Early Children's Books and their Illustration p. 32).

'Contenances de table ... sont appelées de ce nom de courtes pièces de vers qui énoncent les règles de la bonne tenue à table (c'est un thème de composition très répandue à la fin du Moyen Âge) et qui, de ce fait, contiennent de précieux renseignements sur la vie privée de ce temps. S'inspirant de poèmes latins médiévaux comme le Liber Faceti, De curialitatibus in mensa conservandis, le Modus cenandi, ces textes sont au nombre de trois: le premier, de soixante vers octosylabiques, composé à la fin du XIIIe, recommande en particulier de penser aux pauvres, de s'essuyer les lèvres avant de boire (il n'y a souvent qu'un verre pour toute la table), de ne pas tremper son morceau de viande dans la salière, de se laver les mains après le repas (la fourchette est encore inconnue) ...; le second, de quarante-sept distiques, dérive du précédent (il mentione la serviette); le troisième, écrit au XVe, comporte trente-sept quatrains que suit une ballade; il emprunte beaucoup au poème no 2, qu'il dilue et amplifie' (Dictionnaire des Lettres Françaises, Le Moyen Age, p. 330). The printed Contenances offered here are of the third version, written in thirty-seven quatrains, and ending with a ballad. Anonymously published, they may originate from the same author, as La doctrine du pere au fils, Le doctrinal d's nouveaux mariez, Le doctrinal des filles, and La voye d'padis. These four opuscules, similar in style, and with the same woodcut printer's device on the title, are found bound together in a Sammelband preserved in the Bibliothèque Impériale.

Enfant se tu es ung yvroigne
Par trop boire il est deshonneste
Et si en as mal en ta teste
Et puis apres honte et vergoigne...

Enfant ce test chose honteuse
Se tu as serviete ou drap
De boire dedans ton hanap
La bouche toute orde et baveuse

Much sought after since the time of publication, a facsimile edition, limited to 35 copies - one printed on vellum - was published in 12mo by Bulmer and Co. for the Roxburghe Club in 1816. Another facsimile, limited to 20 copies, was published in Paris, c. 1850, with a copy being offered in Pierre Berès's catalogue Nourritures of 1991 for Ff 8000.

Baudrier XI 483 (listing a copy at Fribourg); Brunet II 244; Cat. Firmin Didot, 1879, 219; Vicaire 207-8; although ISTC provides several entries, the earliest there being described as 'Lyons, Printer of the Complainte de l'âme damnée, about 1485-90', no certain sequence of editions - none are dated - has been established. A total of six copies - none in the British Library - of the various Paris and Lyons printings are recorded in ISTC: two at Chantilly, two at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, one at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and one at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich; the only American location is Pierpont Morgan Library, New York (the only known copy of the first edition: see Fairfax Murray 106).
      [Bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd.]