Aesop's Fables: A Classic Illustrated Edition.

Abstract

A truly magnificent book--not that different from a book I would have liked to publish someday! Excellent black-and-white and color illustrations. The five-page introduction gives a good overview of the history of Aesop illustration. Fully thirteen of the twenty-nine artists sampled here are new to me. Perhaps the range is broader than in other surveys because the selection is not limited to one library. However, the range of selection raises questions: why begin in 1857 and stop at 1944 (except for one set of unpublished 1970 lithographs)? One German calendar is the only non-English contribution. The introduction speaks of the many hundreds of editions of Aesop's Fables published in Great Britain, Europe and the United States during the past 150 years and the dust jacket of the finest illustrations from the last one hundred years. What of Thurber or Frasconi? Why not stretch to include Gorey (1971), Levine (1975), Eichenberg (1979), and Carle (1980)? Despite these questions (and a sentence beginning not capitalized on 8), this is one of the most recommendable of Aesop books.