Fontaine's Fables

Abstract

Wonderful colored illustrations in a delightful book. The best are those at the end of each of the six stories (e.g., of the wolf with the last lamb bones). In the Three-in-One copy, a youthful crayon lover has marked up lots of the black-and-white illustrations that alternate with the great colored pictures. The Antiquarian Archive copy has some pencilling, smudging, and other signs of wear. The illustrations are selected from among those in Hachette's 1921 Fables (entirely in color), reprinted in 1992; here they are slightly larger, and the text in them is of course transformed into English. Several illustrations are dropped from the original in each story. From the original this text drops the lamb's reference to being at its mother's teat, and Lorioux's chicken hanging in the fox's kitchen with an a conserver sign on it has become a pedestrian pot.