The Fables of Aesop With a Life of the Author and Embellished with one Hundred Twelve Plates, Vol. II

Abstract

This is the one of three two-volume Stockdales. All three pairs differ in several ways from what I believe to be a true first, listed under 1793. Though these editions kept the title page of the 1793 first printing (right down to the date of 4th June), the text was reset using the modern s rather than the elongated letter similar to our f but without the crossbar. All three copies misprint page 237 in this Volume II as 273. All three acknowledge T. Bensley as printer on 189 of Volume I and 248 of Volume II; my 1793 printing had not done that. None of these has an advertisement for Gay after the last page of Volume II, as my 1793 had. All three copies show a fair amount of foxing. Of the three, the First Folio copy is particularly beautifully bound. By contrast with the O'Neal pair, the First Folio copy and this Hoffman copy are cropped so closely that The disappears from the top of the title, and much of the date disappears at the bottom. See the 1793 printing for comments on the illustrations. Because all three copies are precious, I am including all three in the collection and giving them independent ID numbers. This copy has had a colorful history: it spent time in the Library of the Polytechnic Society of Kentucky and then in the Louisville Free Public Library Reference Collection.