Three Hundred Aesop's Fables

Abstract

This tight, well-executed book, uses the same text and the same engravings that appear in Routledge editions of 1867 and 1885? Let me note the differences and repeat some good comments from those editions. Greenaway is no longer mentioned on the title-page as engraver. This edition uses the first two pages of the preface and drops the other nineteen pages. The life of Aesop drops the Greek and Latin sections and cuts the text from four pages to two. The list of illustrations does not appear here. The AI at the back of those editions appears at the front of this edition. The text is newly typeset. The paper is better here. I note little or no foxing. The engravings are slightly less defined. One finds Weir's name less clearly imprinted in the illustrations, for example. Weir so often appears in cheap editions whose illustrations are indistinct! Among the most memorable illustrations here are LM (11), WL (13), WC (15), TH (19), The Seagull and the Kite (119), and The Ass and His Driver (209). There is a set of illustrations that I find sketchier and almost ethereal. They would include The Labourer and the Snake (43) and The Blind Man and the Whelp (177). This is one of many excellent contributions from the Leeper Collection.