The Child's Own Picture and Verse Book.
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Authors
Stalking Wolf
Issue Date
1864
Volume
Issue
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Abstract
A wonderful little squarish book in very good condition. Ninety-seven verse fables, each in a standard format: a text, ten to fifteen lines long, on the left page is echoed in a framed illustration on the right page. The unchanging frame includes a circular FS scene above and a DLS scene below. It is curious that while so many of the stories are fables, the book never mentions them as such. One of the few non-fables is on 36. Some of the fables are presented differently here. The bear only scratches the hermit, who admonishes him about future behavior (22); the cat claims on 44 that she will eat the bat as a bird; the fly in the telescope is perceived to be a planet (46); not priests but gypsies beat the ass even after his death (84); and the animal who gets help to remain unperceived by the hunters is here not a fox but a stag (172). There are some problems. For example, there is at times a strange mixture of direct and indirect speech, e.g., on 156. Further, could the milkmaid with her fancy hat on 191 have balanced a pail on her head? A good sample version is The Rocket and the Star on 130. Another is The Chameleon (116). There are many taunt and response conversations. Many trees and plants speak. The illustrations are delightful. There is one for each fable except the first. Add the frontispiece, the title page, and the front cover (with its lovely embossed The Shepherd and the Dog) and we seem to fall one short of the hundred engravings promised by the title-page. Good examples of fine illustrations are The Lion Worn with Age (63), The Lynx and the Mole (79), and The Ass and the Farmer (171). The foxes inside the vignette-pictures are less successful (e.g., 163 and 165). Most of the lions here are not successfully rendered (103, 146). There are six title-page advertisements for books in the very last pages.
Description
Citation
Publisher
Anderson and Ramsay printers, 28 Frankfort Street)
James Miller
James Miller
License
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PubMed ID
DOI
Identifier
1734 (Access ID)