This manuscript on vellum is written in the Parisian dialect of the time and was most likely edited by the author himself. Prof. X. Muratova proposes that the book was a wedding present from Thibault IV (Count of Champagne, later Thibault I, King of Navarre) to the future King of France, Philip the Bold.

It is complete and includes 71 images in 65 miniatures and is bound in a 14th century vellum binding. It was produced in the workshop that was mainly active for King Louis IX of France.

The bestiary was a popular genre in the Middle Ages in which the illustration of an animal was accompanied by a moral lesson. In his Bestiary of Love, Fournival marries this with more traditional courtly love poetry, thereby creating a new literary form that fuses natural history, philosophy, and love poetry.