The Dog in the Manger and other Aesop's Fables

Abstract

Fourteen fables on 40 large-format pages. I am fortunate to have found a whole set of the first printing at once, and at an attractive price! The books are a further use of 200 Aesop's Fables: Favourite Fables to Share, which Miles Kelly published in 2012. Here fables are not grouped as there. Still, all of the fables in this volume were a part of the Challenge and Chance section in that book. Though based on the earlier book, each of these pamphlets is larger in format than that book was. Though the illustrations stay proportionately the same, I notice subtle changes in the texts and titles. Thus The Lioness and the Vixen there (200) has become The Lioness and the Fox here (12). The Cat Maiden is told in a form new to me. Venus and Zeus argue, the latter that things could change their habits and instincts. Venus argues that such change is impossible. Zeus makes the transformation and at the wedding feast Venus conjures up a mouse, and the bride tries to pounce on it (9). The Donkey and Its Shadow is well told here (14). Picture and text are well integrated in The Wolf, the Fox, and the Ape (21). This version continues the 2012 typo in The Lion's Share (29). The lion bellowed and the other leapt to it. This sentence needs others, not other. The thick, slippery pages still contain little characters around the edges. Throughout this volume, the frame including these animals is the same. Lambs cavort on top of the left-hand page, and a stag stands alert lower left. A monkey swings upper right and a monkey points an accusing finger on the lower right. One of these symbols appears with each moral. Every fable is illustrated.