Aesop's Fables

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Authors

Aesop
Rhead, Louis

Issue Date

1927

Type

Book, Whole

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Abstract

Here is a very curious book. I had not known of it until I saw a copy advertised through Old Friends in Portland for $130. At almost the same time, Greg mentioned it to me from a computer listing of his. Pictorial black cloth octavo with a colored frontispiece and three other full-page colored illustrations. The bottom of its spine is skinned. Finding the Blue Ribbon Books edition of this same book helped me to identify the painter of the cover/frontispiece illustration of GA, namely Schoonover. One would not learn in either edition that the text and preface are taken from (I believe) George Fyler Townsend. His justification is that his first association lay in being asked to provide new morals and applications, while in this text he is concerned with a purer translation, and more literal rendering of the fables (xix). The latest thing he cites in his bibliography is from 1857. The text seems to be identical with the Townsend text in the Parents' Magazine edition of 1964. I do notice now for the first time Townsend's creative approach--a thorn-tree stick--to the fable about the child prophesied to be killed by a lion (190). The engravings are of all sizes and shapes, including one (TH on 9) repeating a colored illustration (facing 6). The other colored illustrations are of BF facing 41 and FG 118. The Vain Jackdaw text (39) does not match in sense the colored illustration of the story facing 41. Typical of Rhead's work are the illustrations on 20 and 87. Note the mother with bandaged ear on 55. There is an AI at the front, followed by a list of illustrations. I can find no mention of this book in any of my resources.

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Harper & Brothers

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