The Fables of Aesop.

Abstract

A wonderfully curious gift. As Tom points out, the book starts with a nice cover design modelled on Heighway's The Fisher and the Little Fish (116) with the addition of a background including modern ships. Adding things will be the keynote to this book. For it takes most basically the frequently-used text of moral-less fables that I have first in The Book of Fables (1880) and adds to it a few of Jacobs' texts, many of Jacobs' morals, and many of Heighway's illustrations--none of these acknowledged. The colored frontispiece (unfortunately separated) of a bagpiping fisherman is developed from Heighway's illustration (e.g. on 101 in my 1894/1929 Heighway edition) but, like the cover, much embellished. Jacobs' version, used here, makes more sense of this baffling fable than most by having one fish give a moral When you are in a man's power you must do as he bids you. Other borrowings from Jacobs include FC (13), The Wolf and the Kid (141), and a line of The Cat and the Fox (169) used to introduce the moral and simply added on to the text from The Book of Fables. Fifteen full-page Heighway illustrations, each with blank verso, are inserted outside the text's pagination. At 198 the book, like The Book of Fables, moves to Later Fables ; unlike it, it does not acknowledge the addition on the title-page. This book selects 52 of the 132 fables offered there and inserts three (216, 232, 244) of Ernest Griset's thirty-nine illustrations used there. The Mastiff and the Cubs (232) includes the printer's scribbling of its dimensions within the illustration-- 31/2 x 6 ! Close comparison with the Book of Fables, where this illustration is the frontispiece, shows that the Burt book's image has been cropped to remove Griset's signature. There are slight cracks in the binding at 164 and 190. This book has really been fun to investigate!