Aesop's Fables
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Authors
Aesop
Griset, Ernest Henry
Rundell, J. B
Issue Date
1890
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This book is internally identical with the Cassell and Company volume which I have listed under 1893/93? I am no longer certain that 1893 was the original date for this edition. This book is distinguished from that one by its colorful cover, which shows a young man in red with an owl on his shoulder as he looks down on the scene of the three foxes and the grapes as Griset had illustrated it. Cataloguing the book gives me a chance now to place this edition and its reprints into some perspective with the first edition. The first edition included some 266 fables and 93 illustrations. This edition announces at the end of the editor's preface that about 130 fables (I believe it comes to 132) have been added under the care of another Editor. These fables are in both prose and verse and come from various sources, including Gay's The Hare and Many Friends (221). In this edition, they begin abruptly without announcement after The Ant and the Chrysalis, that is, on 219 with The Bee and the Fly. Bodemann gives 1874-5 for this edition by Cassell, Petter & Galpin and speaks of 132 new prose and verse fables and of 66 new illustrations, 22 of them full-page, 22 vignettes at the beginning of fables, and 22 vignettes at the end of individual fables. I found only 39 new illustrations, but I may have overlooked some vignettes. Let me mention here those I find most impressive among these new illustrations. Some, like The Two Lizards (261), move a step further into the visually weird. Others may be so familiar to me from many reprints in various forms that they are now old friends. They include The Mastiff and the Cur (269), The Wolf and the Shepherds (315), The Litigious Cats (343), The Blind Man and the Lame Man (perhaps one of Griset's most reprinted illustrations, 373), The Hermit and the Bear (381), and Finis (384). Other than J.B.R. after the editor's preface, there is no mention here of Rundell, even on the title-page.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Cassell & Company Limited,