Aesop's Fables: A New Version Chiefly from the Original Sources
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Authors
Aesop
James, Thomas
Tenniel, John,
Wolf, Joseph
Issue Date
1867
Type
Book, Whole
Language
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Alternative Title
Abstract
This little book represents my first copy of Wolf's revision of Tenniel's work. Tenniel's original 1848 work published by Murray apparently got such a negative response that, before reissuing it in 1851, the publisher asked Joseph Wolf to create replacements for many of the engravings, and Tenniel himself revised some of the others. Apparently Strahan published a Tenniel/Wolf edition in 1867, and this present, smaller-format book may be a later printing of that. In any case, it still contains the 203 fables of the 1848 edition, but their order is different. Lindseth's 1868 Murray printing (F-0110) represents the sixty-third thousand. This present book, the sixty-eighth thousand, features a list of illustrations before the title page and an AI at the back. If one compares this book with the 1848 Murray first edition, some illustrations seem untouched (The Fox and the Goat, The Dog Invited to Supper, MSA), while others are changed quite drastically (FG, WC, FS). What Wolf loses, I believe, is the strong sense of dimensionality Tenniel achieved by the intensity of black: the best of Tenniel leaps off of the page, and Wolf's work does not leap! Consult my 1995 The Fables of Aesop from the QPBC for extensive comment on the movement from Tenniel to Wolf.
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Citation
Publisher
John Murray