The Fables of Aesop: Selected, told anew and their history traced by Joseph Jacobs

Abstract

I count twelve different editions of Jacobs/Heighway that I have collected before I finally got back to a first edition. This book has a green decorated cloth cover with gilt titles. It is inscribed in 1903. There is a curious pre-title page that says Jacobs's Fables of Aesop. The book is in very good condition. I love Heighway's work! There are 220 pages, followed by a two-page AI and by advertisements. The order of the early elements following the curious Jacobs's page is this: a left-hand page with a MacMillan logo (M over M over & over C, all framed); a left-page frontispiece of two scenes showing FS; a tissue protector; a title page with ornate left and right borders; a right-page dedication to Prof. F.J. Child; a preface signed by Jacobs beginning on the right page (ix) and ending over a design on xii; a Contents page; A Short History of the Aesopic Fable (xv-xxii); List of Fables (xxiii-xxv) including eighty-two fables numbered here but not in the text; a left-page showing a hand holding a mirror's reflection of a demon and a right page with a framed scroll of a title (The Fables of Aesop); and finally The Cock and the Pearl (2-3). By contrast with many of the smaller editions, the two pages of one fable here face each other, and so one does not need to turn a page to finish a fable. The illustrations, titles, and closing designs are very distinct here. Among the best are The Hart & the Hunter (64), The Fox & the Cat (90), The Shepherd's Boy (103), The Four Oxen & The Lion (123), and GGE (134). There is a bit of pencilling on 181 and 189.