La Fontaine: A Present for the Young From the French

Abstract

This is an unusual--and an unusually expensive--little volume. It has its title clearly engraved in gold on its green cloth cover. There are 108 pages of verse fables without illustrations. Now, here is a pleasant surprise. The only thing that is not either title-page or fable texts is To the Public. Here the author describes this booklet as a pigmy balloon or, as we might say, trial balloon. Its fables are selected from a manuscript translation of the entire work of La Fontaine. A little checking in my records proved helpful. The writer is Elizur Wright, and this is a little precursor of his fine and important work. Maybe it was worth the high price after all! The translation of GA, the first fable here, is different from that in his later published work of 1841 and 1843, but the translations of other fables are the same.