Aesops [sic] Fables

Abstract

This is a large-format toy book in very poor condition. Every page is frayed and torn. Pencil scribblings are frequent. The binding has been crudely sewn. It reduplicates--with two losses--the Aesop's Fables section of Old Friends and New Faces (1870) by the same publisher. Thus it never prints on both sides of the page. It begins with a full-page text and full-page colored illustration of 2W. There follow four pages of quartets of fable texts and matching quartets of colored fable pictures. The parallel section of Old Friends includes five such quartets. The text-page for the first quartet, including BS, is missing. My favorites among the illustrations still include the long-nosed woman sniffing the empty cask, the blackamoor being scrubbed, and the menacing owner of the ass in the lion-skin. The last four texts are printed on the inside of the back cover. The back cover itself has advertisements for several different series of Cassell's children books, including this one, which is said to include twenty-one plates.