Aesop's Fables (with 24 colour plates)

Abstract

Collectors sometimes go crazy. So it is here. This book is 99.9% identical with one already in the collection. What is the difference? The spine of this book has "Ward-Lock" whereas that other has "Ward-Lock and Co." Otherwise I can find no difference. I will include remarks from there after noting that this copy cost less than ⅓ of that copy! I will include remarks I made on that copy. This is the third distinct book I have found now in the "Sunshine Series" by Ward and Lock. The other two have, respectively, sixteen colored plates and sixteen colored plates plus eight sepia illustrations. This one is exactly identical with the latter with the following exceptions. First, it offers what were sepia illustrations at the same place but here in full color. Secondly, it has for its cover not FS but an enlargement of a detail from "The Wolf and the Fox" (112), showing the fox in a bucket in a well. Thirdly, its advertisement for "The Sunshine Series" on the verso of the pre-title page is identical with the advertisement at the same place in the other volume except that it offers fewer volumes and says of course "Each with 24 Colour Plates" and not "Each with 16 Colour Plates and 8 Sepia Illustrations." The ten volumes that it does offer are all among the fourteen in the other advertisement as well. "Aesop's Fables" does not appear in the advertisement here, as it does there. The printer here is not Whitefriars but Butler & Tanner Ltd., Frome and London. Here the leaping fox of FG on 68 is a classic! See my comments on both of the other books in the Sunshine Series. Ward and Lock used the same illustrations in a second family of Rountree books with Winder texts, listed here under the same date. They are generally advertised as "Prince Charming" or "Charming Colour Books for Children," are smaller in page-format, and include more illustrations than these volumes in the Sunshine series. Rountree was also involved in another distinct venture, the publishers of which were Collins and the Children's Press. I have those grouped under "1922?"