Aesop's Fables: A New Revised Version From Original Sources.

Abstract

This book is internally exactly the same as books of the same title that I have listed in the same year. That it has exactly the same plates is clear, e.g., from the broken typeface at the top of 5. It repeats the blooper of those other texts on the title-page: Uwards of 200 Illustrations! I had called a previous cover for this book outrageous: two young riders ride into the viewer's world. I wrote then: This cover-maker must have been having fun! On an earlier edition he pictured two young men, apparently a golfer and a pole-vaulter. Here he has two men moving toward the reader in a canoe, the closer one holding a rifle across his lap. Are these the men who have come to shoot the one-eyed deer? The choice of image remains a mystery to me! Now this book has an even more outrageous cover image: a baseball player and a football player, separated by a golden eagle and an instance of the American flag. Though there are thirteen stripes, there are only twenty-five stars; the twenty-sixth state was admitted into the Union in 1837. I struggle to find a connection with Aesop. Is the publisher trying to sell books to children interested in sports? Might there be a whole series of sports-covers for this fable book? Is Hurst stressing that this is an American edition? The book is inscribed on June 10, 1912. My guess of a dating of 1910 may not be too far off.