Remark:
After some study of Weir in 2000, I look back on this book as a very fortunate find. The engravings (executed by either Greenaway or Butterworth and Heath) are different from the several other sets of Weir illustrations I have. The latter seem to date back to The Children's Picture Fable Book (1860) and Three Hundred Aesop's Fables Literally Translated (1865 and 1867). The illustrations here fill out a full rectangle. The texture of Weir's animals here is unusual, and there is something tableau-like, inactive, about his scenes. The best of the illustrations is, I believe, of the jackdaw and eagle (78). There are one-hunded and seven fables. The front end-paper is lacking. There is a Tof C, with a list of illustrations, at the front. Besides the twenty-four full-page illustrations, there are the smaller designs on the title page and with the first and last fables. After surveying the extra copy I have from Abbey Antiquarian, I am more than ever impressed with the quality of the Bookstall copy. In the Abbey copy, the FC illustration (facing 42) is replaced with a xerox copy.
