Uncle Charlie's Favourite Fables
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Authors
Charlie
Issue Date
1899?
Type
Book, Whole
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
My list of books titled by Uncle is growing: Uncle Frank, Uncle Didrick, Uncle Ben Jay, and of course Uncle Remus. Now here is Uncle Charlie. This is some of the clearest work I have by Weir: his main contribution to the book seems to lie in the quadrangular illustrations that take about two-thirds of a given page. Weir appears in Bodemann only for the 1865 Townsend edition and a French LaFontaine published around 1890 by Ardant in Limoges. Several Weir engravings here seem to add 1869 to his signature, like The Vine and the Goat and FG. The full-page illustrations, like The Stag in the Ox-Stall and The Charger and the Ass, seem to be from a different hand and to be generic animal pictures not related to the fable's scene. They are in any case less impressive. It continues to amaze me that publishers added pictures of animals to a book like this almost without reference to the specific story at hand. Thus LM features a strong Weir illustration but also a picture of four mice eating around a bird's nest. The following story of The Ass and the Little Dog has a good line drawing of the ass rising up in front of its master, but also a generic picture of a dog looking out of his doghouse. This book would provide a field-day for investigators of late-nineteenth century Aesopic and other illustrations. Other names on illustrations include Greenaway, Swain, Zwecker, Pearson, Trood, and Berkeley. The paper-covered spine is weakening. Pictorial boards. The front cover shows a ram, a lamb, and a bird, the back cover a pug and a turtle. In a curious contradiction, the verso of the last page says Printed by Morrison and Gibb Limited, Edinburgh; the cover seems, around a slight tear, to proclaim Imp. H. Grünblum Weimar. The book is inscribed in 1900.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Griffith Farran Browne & Co. Limited