1940 Animal Stories. Chosen, arranged, and in some part rewritten by Walter de la Mare. Illustrations after Edward Topsell. With a preface by the author. Hardbound. Dust-jacket. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. $12.50 from Epona Books, Smyrna, GA, through abe, August, '03. 

I am happy to include a copy of this classic in the collection. It presents fifty animal stories, divided by the opening T of C into stories and rhymes. Fables include well told versions of "The Hare and the Hedgehog" (3); "The Mouse, the Bird, and the Sausage" (11); "The Wolf and the Fox" (31); "The Knight and the Greyhound" (111); and "The Dog and the Sparrow" (160). The illustrations are taken from Topsell's "Historie of Foure-Footed Beastes." Here is a curiosity. I had copied the flyleaf of the dust jacket, which proclaims "Selected, edited and in part rewritten by Walter de la Mare." The title-page has rather "Chosen, arranged, and in some part rewritten by Walter de la Mare." The cover, finally, has "Chosen and Arranged by Walter de la Mare."

1940 Come to Storyland. Short Stories and Verse Selected for Boys and Girls. Akron: The Saalfield Publishing Company. $5 at Venice Antiques, March, '95.

Yet another large-format Saalfield publication on cheap paper and featuring the same stories over again! "The Tortoise Who Would Talk" seems new here. Old friends include "The Hare and the Hedgehog Run a Race" and TMCM. These are identical, respectively, to a version of the latter in Favorite Stories (1941), to versions of both in Our Story Book (1942), and to a version of the latter in the smaller To Storyland (1942), which also features the best paper and printing in this grouping.

1940 Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. James Thurber. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Harper and Brothers. $20 at Lien's Bookshop, Minneapolis, Dec., '97. Extra copy without dust jacket or outside spine for $10.50 at Gryphon, March, '93.

I have worked my way back to a first edition! And now even to a dust jacket! When it appeared, this book cost $2.50! The Lien copy is in very good condition; I cannot believe how bright its inside cover is. I am delighted to have found this book!

1940 Jataka Tales: Animal Stories. Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt. With illustrations by Ellsworth Young. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc. A gift from Reinert Alumni Library, Creighton University, Oct., '03.

RAL withdrew this book from their general collection and asked me if it belonged in the fable collection. At first, it looks like a copy of the book of the same dimensions done in the same year. It is worth looking inside. The publisher for this copy is not Prentice-Hall but Appleton-Century-Crofts. The paper is not white but creamy in color. Some page numbers, especially at the beginning of the book, are poorly rendered. The formatting of the cover's information is different. This would seem to be the more original edition, since the book had been done earlier by "Century." As I commented on the Prentice-Hall edition, this little book reproduces the earlier editions of 1912 and 1918. See my other comments on each of these editions. This edition still has, of course, the lovely silhouettes.

1940 Jataka Tales: Animal Stories. Re-told by Ellen C. Babbitt. With illustrations by Ellsworth Young. First edition. False. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Century. $11.55 from Elisabeth Butkovich, Kew Gardens, NY, through Ebay, March, '00.

This little book reproduces the earlier editions of 1912 and 1918. See my comments especially on the former. The format of the book is smaller because it cuts the wide margins used there. Notice that the publisher has changed. So has the title, which did not mention "Animal Stories." As with every edition of this book that I have found, the title-page reads "Jataka Tales," but the cover reads "The Jatakas: Tales of India." This edition still has, of course, the lovely silhouettes.

1940 L'Esopo Moderno: Quattrocentotrenta Favole. Pietro Pancrazi. Salomon?. Terza edizione accresciuta e illustrata. Hardbound. Vallechhi Editore. $21 from Libreria Da Pilade, Florence, through choosebooks.com, Feb., '03. 

The 430 fables are numbered in the T of C at the back. Pancrazi writes a "Poscritto 1940" after his original "Invito all'Esopo" dated in 1930. The only thing I can find on Pancrazi so far is his life span, 1893-1953. The woodcuts look like enlarged versions of Salomon. The fables stay brief in this presentation: good! A brown fox who has just turned around to look at us graces the gray cloth cover with a title in green. I am very surprised to have found this book.

1940 Little Folk's Fables from Aesop. No editor mentioned. Illustrations by William A. Kolliker. The Little Color Classics. Springfield, MA: McLoughlin Bros. $12 at Yesterday's Memories, June, '96. Extra copies for $3 at Blake Books, May, '93, and, with a detached binding, for $.25 at The Antiquarium, Omaha, May, '88.

At last, I have a good, clean copy of this curious little book, which spells its title three different ways: I use here the correct version on the cover rather than the interior title's Folks' or the title page's Folks. The twenty-five fables are listed in the T of C, but there is no pagination. Standard two-color illustrations. Spilled milk and lost eggs are pictured in the same scene. "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" makes the wolf's mistake his attempt to sound like a sheep while he is stealing. Striking morals: "Do not wish your own misfortunes upon others" for FWT and "Give me liberty or give me death" for DW. In the Blake copy, there is pencilling on the front endpapers and in LM.

1940 Nursery Comics. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Racine: Whitman Publishing Company. $20 at Blake, June, '93. Extra copy for $13.50 at Prince and the Pauper, San Diego, Aug., '93.

An oversize book with heavy paper. One page each for fourteen stories, each told in nine square illustrations. Two are fables. TH has the hare, but not the tortoise, dressed in human clothes. The hare sleeps at a "Half Way" sign and ends up losing by a "nose" in the text but a shoulder in the illustration. LM has the mouse but not the lion dressed humanly. The mouse enjoys sitting on the sleeping lion's forehead. The lion is caged first and then just roped. The mouse visits the lion out of sheer friendliness, knowing nothing of his capture or distress. He ends up riding on the lion's forehead.

1940 Story and Verse for Children. Selected and edited by Miriam Blanton Huber. Decorations by Boris Artzybasheff. NY: Macmillan. $7.50, Jan., '88.

Twelve fables from Jacobs on 299-302. No illustrations for the fables. Meant for the third through the fifth grades. This book contains a wealth of material. Good reading lists, and a good paragraph on 210 critical of fables in education.

1940 The Fables of La Fontaine. Translated by Margaret Wise Brown. Illustrated by André Hellé. NY: Harper. $25 from Cynthia K. Fowler, June, '88. Extra copy in poorer condition for $5 from Esther Goudie, Danbury, CT, through Ebay, Nov., '00.

The Hellé four-color illustrations are done beautifully here (though often reversed, in different colors, and with some French taken out: compare the cover with 22). The book takes seventeen of the twenty-five fables in Fables de la Fontaine.

1940 The Laidlaw Basic Readers: Book Two. Gerald Yoakam, M. Madilene Veverka, and Louise Abney. Illustrated by Milo Winter and others. Chicago: Laidlaw Brothers. $8.50 from McCormick's Antiques of Clovis, CA at the Sacramento Paper Fair, Jan., '97.

It would be fun to trace the continuity of this book with The Laidlaw Readers: Book Two of 1924/28, since two of the authors are the same. This book may also be close to identical with Laidlaw's Stories We Like, with which there is again some common authorship. Winter is the only illustrator mentioned there. There is here as there just one fable, MSA, on the same pages (104-11). The book has been well used!

1940/46 Fabels van La Fontaine. Jan Prins. Engravings of Grandville. Utrecht/Antwerp: Prisma paperback: Spectrum. $2 in Amsterdam, Dec., '88.

Poorer reproductions of Grandville's engravings than in the 1976 third printing. Also a different cover. The last of these Dutch fables has a different translator, M. Nijhoff.

1940/46/76 Fabels van La Fontaine. Jan Prins. Engravings of Grandville. Utrecht/Antwerp: Prisma paperback: Spectrum. $2.75 in Amsterdam, Dec., '88.

Excellent reproductions of Grandville's engravings, better than in the 1946 first printing. Also a different cover. The last of these Dutch fables has a different translator, M. Nijhoff.

1940/55/65 Story and Verse for Children. Selected and edited by Miriam Blanton Huber. Black-and-white illustrations by various artists. NY: Macmillan. $2 at Alley Bookstore, Highland Park, August, ’96.

Compare this book with the first edition. The same twelve fables from Jacobs appear, now on 325-29. Now there is one black-and-white illustration, unacknowledged, for LM. There are suggestions for the appropriate grades, first through sixth. There is still a good short discussion of the suitability of fables for children (now on 240).

1940/83 Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. James Thurber. Paperback from the 1940 hardbound edition. NY: Harper. $4.95 from Schwartz, Summer, '85.

"The Mouse Who Went to the Country," "The Sheep in Wolf's Clothing," "The Tortoise and the Hare" are the fables that come closest to Aesop. The moral of the first is "Stay where you are, you're sitting pretty." That advice comes after all sorts of scrambles. The second mocks journalism. The last is done a la Bierce. Enjoyable drawings.

1940? Dix Fables d'Animaux: Illustrations en Silhouettes et Morales humoristiques aux dépens des Humains. par Henri Avelot. Pamphlet. Paris: Librairie Henri Laurens, Éditeur. 200 Francs from D.V.F. Chanut, Paris, by mail, April, '00.

Sixteen pages of excellent two-colored silhouettes presenting ten animal fables and a human application for each. Thus FG shows other children agitated while one boy receives an award from a teacher (1). To illustrate the stag caught in the branches after seeing itself in the water, we see an all-dressed-up young lady in full, even spherical, skirt caught on a fence in front of a charging bull, while the girl in everyday clothes has skipped free (5). DS shows a man (Chinese?) bringing his money-sack to the East Indian company to invest it (11). LM shows a little servant holding an umbrella for a society-woman on a rainy day (15). T of C at the back. Not in Bassy or Bodemann.

1940? Fabelen van de la Fontaine voor de Jeugd. Naverteld door Jan Wiegman en door hemzelf geillustreerd. Den Haag: G.B. van Goor Zonen. $30 at Antiquariaat Bert Hagen, Amsterdam, Dec., '88.

A lovely edition, which seems to come from the library of the author/illustrator himself. Lively and witty orange-and-black illustrations, with some silhouettes included. Notice the rock-throwing bear on 35. T of C at the end.

1940? Fables from Aesop. Retold by Dorothy King. Illustrations by Cyril Deakins. Dust jacket. Hardbound. London & Glasgow: Blackie Stories Old and New: Blackie & Son. £8 from Garnock Books, March, '04.

Blackie did an earlier--I presume--edition of King's Fables of Aesop, in this very series of "Blackie Stories Old and New," but the illustrations were by Allan Carter, though he was not acknowledged. This edition comes up only slightly shorter than that, with 124 pages as opposed to 128. As in the Carter edition, there is an AI at the front of the book. I count one hundred and ten fables here as opposed to one hundred and fourteen in the Carter version. The black-and-white illustrations have persistent difficulties with dimensionality and perspective. There are also three stronger full-page colored illustrations: "The Fox and the Goat" (45), BC (60), and "The Peacock and the Crane" (92). The dust jacket has "The Fox and the Goat" pictured on the cover.

1940? Fables Written in Gregg Shorthand with Shorthand Penmanship Pointers. Reprinted from The Gregg Writer. Pamphlet. NY: The Gregg Writer. $6.81 from Judy Newman, Saint Louis, through Ebay, April, '00.

This pamphlet, 3¼" x 6¼", contains one fable per page over pages 3-52. A lovely note from Judy Newman accompanies the pamphlet: "This belonged to John's mom--just the sort of quirky little thing she would get a kick out of. We hope you will too!" Do not worry, Judy. I delight in these Aesopic quirks!

1940? Fantastic Debunking Fables.   Little Blue Book No. 1081. Ambrose Bierce. Pamphlet. Printed in USA. Girard, Kansas: Little Blue Book No. 1081: Haldeman-Julius Company. $9.99 from Wayne Miller at Magic Carpet, Clarksville, MD, through Ebay, June, '99.

Is "Debunking" Haldeman-Julius' own addition? The fables seem to reproduce Bierce's "Fables" (but not "Aesopus Emendatus" or "Old Saws with New Teeth") but not exactly in the order found in Dover's edition and without including the last fifty or sixty there. I notice that this edition ends on 64: that may be a maximum size for Little Blue Books. I did not know of this edition. I am glad to see Bierce getting around! ©1911 by The Neale Publishing Company.

1940? Favourite Fables. By Margaret Baker. Hardbound. London: The Little Big Books: Humphrey Milford/Oxford University Press. $9.99 from Kim Silliker, Harley on the Bay, N.B., Canada, through eBay, April, '04. 

The General Editor of "The Little Big Books" is Mrs. Herbert Strang. The "signature" illustration for the book seems to be the very first illustration, which shows five animals sitting with their backs to us: mouse, steer, rabbit, donkey, and turtle. The same pose with different animals occurs three pages later on the title page, only here the animals include a frog, fox, lion (with a bird in his mane), a heron, and a crow. There is a full-page colored illustration of LM for the frontispiece. There seems to be at least one black-and-white illustration per story. Perhaps the best of these is the second for WS, which shows a happy swimmer. The fourteen stories presented include: LM, BC, TH, "The Fox and the Crane," TMCM, FC, DM, MSA, OF, WS, CJ, "The Donkey and his Shadow," FG, and "The Oxen and the Wagon." The book has cracked between 46 and 47. The paper stock for the 60 pages is very heavy, almost of cardboard consistency.

1940? Humorous Fables. Mark Twain. Little Blue Book No. 668. Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company. $10 at Dad's Old Book Store, Nashville, April, '96. Extra copy for $5 by mail from Josef's Books, Sept., '97.

After years of searching, I have found this booklet! I do not know how many shoeboxes of Little Blue Books I have searched in antique stores hoping to find #668! There are first two contrasting fables about bad and good little boys, wherein the humor arises--in the manner of Thurber--from the fact that the opposite happens from what is said in the books, in this case Sunday school books. Then there is a set of three fables about an expedition of (small) forest creatures. They discover first a set of train tracks and, soon after a train passes, a bottle of liquor cast off of the train. The fun here is in how they get everything wrong in their "science." In the second, they discover a ghost-town and museum. The third begins with a hilarious "translation" of a human document and closes with a titillating find, a reference by these extinct men to "lower animals," whatever those might be! The last fable is "Mrs. McWilliams and the Lightning" (49), a funny piece about a hypochondriac wife and her obliging husband.

1940? Lafontaines Fabeln. Deutsch von Theodor Etzel. Mit Holzschnitten von Grandville. Hardbound. 26th to 35th thousand. Leipzig: Insel-Bücherei #185: Insel Verlag. $5 from Serendipity, Berkeley, June, '01.

This is an apparently later printing of a volume I have already as a gift, and which I have listed under "1935?". There are clear differences. The cover has changed from a white, green, and brown floral pattern to a simpler orange geometric scheme. The title-page's spider-web is gone, but the title-page now uses the "s" at the end of LaFontaine's name that is also on the cover. The colophon still incorrectly gives the source of the illustrations "nach der ersten französischen Ausgabe (1842)," when the first edition of Grandville's work in French was in 1838. That colophon has been brought from the back of the book to the obverse of the title-page. It includes now "26. bis 35. Tausend." Was Anne's copy, without any indication of the number printed, perhaps a first edition? The printer has changed from Breitkopf and Härtel in Leipzig to Poeschel and Trepte in Leipzig. In fact, the selection of fables and illustrations has changed. The script of Etzel's verse translations remains Gothic throughout. This book has the mark of its first seller: L. Blumstein in Tel Aviv.

1940? Les Plus Belles Fables Française. Paperbound. Lyon: Agence Gutenberg Editions. 18 Euros from Librairie Le Tropique du Boxer, Pouilly en Auxois, France, through ABE, Feb., '03.

This twenty-six page pamphlet contains a dozen fables by La Fontaine and the same number by Florian. Each fable except two receives one page of eight or nine colored square illustrations; LM and AD share a page on 11. The color consistency of these illustrations is that of the transfers we used to apply when we were children. My favorites include WL (7) for its sheer graphic quality, "La Coche et la Mouche" (13) for the quality of its illustrations, and "La Guenon, le Singe et la Noix" (26) for its logic. There is a T of C at the back.

1941 Aesop's Fables. A New Version Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Boxed. NY: The Heritage Press. From the Campion House collection, Aug., '79. Extras for $12 from Marshall Field, Jan., '87, and for $8.50 from Powell's, Aug., '87.

This lovely book often brings high prices. Most of the illustrations are brown on white. Some add a golden background. A few show good wit. I would like to include one or two in a slide lecture. Having just worked through the texts extensively in late 1996, I would say that Leaf generally does well at presenting coherent modern stories. He pays good attention to storytelling dynamics, especially motivations and emotions. Ancient references are explained or adapted for readers not knowing, e.g., Greek mythology. The morals are sometimes insightful but sometimes quite platitudinous and banal. I have found eight stories of the 101 here that do not really come from Aesopic sources. Two are told quite differently from usual. "The Hares and the Frogs" (Perry 138, Leaf #45) has hares on their way out of a park that has been terrible to them. They are ready to die if they cannot find a better place to live. They do escape only to be blocked by a quiet brook. They are about ready to jump in and drown themselves when they have the usual surprise of the frogs fearing them. Similarly "The Tortoise and the Eagle" (Perry 230, Leaf #40) has a successful trip, complete with the turtle being returned to the ground. When the eagle asks for his promised reward, the tortoise laughs at him—and the eagle squashes the tortoise! I think it fair to say that Leaf owes a great deal in his versions to Croxall.

1941 Aesop's Fables. A New Version Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Dust jacket. NY: The Heritage Illustrated Bookshelf (The Heritage Press). $7.50 at Biermaier's, Minneapolis, Nov., '92.

Almost identical with the "Heritage Reprints" edition. I presume now that this edition is actually a pre-war edition antedating that one. The chief distinguishing marks are a change from red here to brown there in the cover and the presence there of a disclaimer, on the page preceding the title page, about the government's wartime regulation to use less paper. The last full-page illustration (of the fighting cocks) is omitted from the larger-paged Heritage Press edition, and so this version is two pages shorter. One of the earliest versions of one of the most popular fable books of the century.

1941 Aesop's Fables. A New Version Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Boxed. Dust jacket. NY: The Heritage Reprints. From Clare Leeper, July, '96. Three extra copies, the first a gift of Rod Harrington, July, '00.  Further extra copies for $6.95 at Blake, June, '93 and for $6 from All Saints Cathedral Book Sale, Aug., '86.

Check the inside of the dust jacket to see the "Reprints" marking that sets off this edition from the "Heritage Illustrated Bookshelf" edition, along with the brown cover here and the notation of wartime regulations on the page preceding the title-page. I presume that this is a wartime edition later than that edition.

1941 Aesop's Fables. In a new translation for modern readers, with illustrations by Aldren Watson. Boxed. Mount Vernon: Peter Pauper Press. $35 at Turtle Island, Berkeley, Jan., '91. Extra copy, not boxed, for $20 from James and Mary Laurie, Jan., '97.

Peter Pauper Press has used virtually the same translation for three different editions. Bewick's is also dated 1941. Carle's adds two later copyright dates. The Bewick translation is the fullest, to judge from "The Goat and the Wolf" in all three versions. Here Watson provides delightful, witty green-and-brown illustrations. The best may be the title-page's mouse reading a book. This translation is a great source for morals, as of the mole: "Brag of an ability, betray a weakness" (65). Here the girl has the milk jug on her shoulder (51). Boxed, in perfect condition. Limited to 1650 copies, but not numbered.

1941 Aesop's Fables in a New Translation for Modern Readers. With Illustrations by Thomas Bewick. Translator not acknowledged. Boxed. Mount Vernon: Peter Pauper Press. $10 from Bertram & Williams, Booksellers, Williamsburg, VA, August, '00. Extra copy, unboxed, for $20 at Books of Wonder in NY, Jan., '90.

Very nice copies of Bewick's work in a book in very good condition. AI at the back; no list of illustrations. The illustrations on the cover curiously include two (WL, FS) not used in the book, and at least one used in the book (the bundle of sticks) does not appear on the cover. See the two other Peter Pauper editions copyrighted 1941. This seems to have the fullest text.

1941 Brer Rabbit Stories from Uncle Remus. Front cover and spine: Classics to Grow On. By Joel Chandler Harris. Adapted by Margaret Wise Brown. With the A.B. Frost pictures redrawn for reproduction by Victor Dowling. For Keepworthy Books: Parents' Magazine Enterprises, Inc. NY: Harper & Brothers. Gift of Linda Schlafer, '92?

The twenty-four stories (and thirty-seven illustrations) seem to be taken from Nights wth Uncle Remus and Uncle Remus, His Songs and His Sayings. One particular characteristic of this edition seem to be the removal of "all the adult reminiscent digressions, comments on Uncle Remus and Miss Sally and Aunt Tempy, and on the idiocsyncrasies of childhood" (ix). Another is that "the dialect has been modified slightly in the actual animal dialogue and more or less taken out of the expository passages" (ix). The book thus aims to "simplify and make clear to a wider and a younger public these folk stories...."

1941 Clever and Foolish Tales for Children. Selected by Maude Owens Walters. Illustrated by Ted Freed. Hardbound. NY: Dodd, Mead & Company. $6.99 from Fantastic Stuff on eBay, Nashport, OH, through eBay, April, '03. 

This book is true to its title. It tells, in engaging and enlightened fashion, humorous stories that show cleverness and folly. Most of the stories are six to eight pages long--a bit long for fables, I would say. Many build from traditional fables. Were I to have to categorize, I would probably subtitle the book "Stories Developed from Fables and Other Forms of Literature." Some of the clearest borrowers from fable are "The Jackal and the Crocodile" (91); "Jelly-Fish and the Monkey" (131); "The Valiant Chattee-Maker" (143); "Tit for Tat" (181, about the camel and the jackal); "The Illuminating Fig" (187, about a watermelon and a fig that drops onto the philosopher's nose); "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal" (241); and "The Woman and the Tramp" (249, about nail soup). This book is in fair condition.

1941 Ezopovy Bajky. Translated by Dr. Rudolf Kuthan. Illustrated by Prokopa Laichtra. Afterword by Dr. Rudolf Kuthan. Canvas bound. Prague: Ceska graficka Unie. $5 from Zachary Cohn, Prague, by mail, August, '01.

Nice line illustrations, e.g. of Aesop surrounded by the animals before Book I. Every fable seems to get at least one illustration. Book I has 72 fables. Book II has 14. There is an epilogue by Dr. Kuthan and a T of C at the back. Most of the fables are easy to identify because of the clear line-illustrations. One item that is hard for me to specify is I 17, "Dobrodejka." Apparently meant as a simple children's book. I doubt that many books were being published in Prague in 1941.

1941 Favorite Stories. No author or illustrator named. Akron: Saalfield Publishing Co. $13.50 from Prince and Pauper, San Diego, Aug., '93. Extra copies for $16 at Bookhouse, Arlington, Oct., '91, and for $12.50 from Bowie, Seattle, July, '93.

Two fables among the ten stories and poems. The book is in remarkably good condition except for the break between signatures near the end of "Drakestail." TMCM has mice go to the hole first, then face the cook, the trap, the cat, and the dog. It is labelled as "An English Tale." "The Cats and the Monkey" is identified as from Aesop. See To Storyland (1942) for the plates of the former in a different format book; Our Story Book (1942) for the plates of both; and The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse (1942) for a slightly different version with completely different art.

1941 Les Fables d'Ésope Phyrgien Enrichies de Quatrains a la Fin de Chaque Discours et de Vingt Gravures de André Collot. Mr. de Bellegarde. #171 of 242; Portfolio in Carton. Paris: A l'Emblème du Secrétaire. €200 from Librairie Libre Errance, Clignancourt, Dec., '04. 

Bodemann #443.1. This is another star of the collection. It is a portfolio of large (9½" x 12¾") pages contained in a cardboard carton. The text itself consists of 89 pages presenting a preface by Bellegarde and twenty fables. (Bodemann incorrectly limits the number to eighteen.) Bodemann does well to present the title-page's etching of Aesop; it may be the book's strongest piece of art. The format for each fable is standard, with one double-page to each fable. On the first page is a title starting with the large single word "FABLE," followed by a small two-color design and the start of the prose text. The text continues on the verso, followed by a verse quatrain. On the right-hand page inside is a full-page engraving protected by a slip-sheet. The verso of this page is blank. I am happy to see "Fable du Singe et de ses deux Petits" (23) chosen for presentation here. The engraving suggests nicely the coddling of the favored child and the independence and activity of the other child, pictured here away from the mother. I have trouble reading the engraving of the wounded lion on 29: where is that wound? The engravings tend not to picture action; I prefer those here which picture action, like that of the lion attacking a bull on 33. OF on 65 does a good job of contrasting the effort of the enlarged frog in the foreground with the insouciance of the large bull in the background. Another illustration with more action shows the horse running away after he has kicked the silly lion (89). The two cuts that make up each of the small designs follow on twenty-one unnumbered pages. In each case the two cuts are black and olive. The resulting two-color design is made from putting each pair together. The last page is a colophon-page on the two printers who executed the work.  How much art were Parisians producing in 1941?

1941 Picture Tales from Mexico. Dan Storm. With Thirty-eight Illustrations in Black-and-White by Mark Storm. Seventh Impression. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Philadelphia/NY: J.B. Lippincott Company. $6 from Autumn Winds Bookstore, Depew, NY, through ABE, Feb., '00.

This is a nice sideways (landscape rather than portrait) children's reader once owned by the E.M. Pease Library It includes nineteen stories. It certainly comes from another era. Simple Spanish words are carefully introduced, explained, and translated. The tellings are spirited and entertaining. The "Rabbit & Coyote" series may include the best stories, as the author suggests in his preface. Several fables are included in nicely adapted forms. Thus "The Race Between the Rabbit and the Frog" (20) not only refers to TH; it also reproduces, more or less, "The Hedgehog and the Hare." "The Wax Doll, the Coyote, and Rabbit" (32) reproduces the tar-baby story, including a good final trick. The rabbit is tied up in a tree after he has been caught. Coyote comes by. Rabbit tells him that they want to lock him in the chicken house. Coyote naturally wants to take rabbit's place, tied up in the tree. "The Snake Who Wanted to Fly" (72) is "The Talkative Tortoise" all over again. "Senor Coyote Settles a Quarrel" (85) and "Repaying Good with Evil" (118) both use the "Show me how it was originally" trick from "The Brahmin, the Tiger, and the Jackal." "The Coyote and the Rooster" (107) is Chanticleer. Finally, "Senor Coyote and the Old Lion" (113) is the story about tracks leading in but not out of the lion's den. I have enjoyed this book!

1941 Saroyan's Fables. By William Saroyan. Illustrations by Warren Chappell. Signed by Saroyan. #719 of 1000. First edition. Boxed. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc. $40 from Second Story Books, Bethesda, MD, April, '97.

Twenty-seven good stories of various genres on eighty-nine pages with clever initials. A note before the first story identifies them as old Armenian stories, including some remembered in Fresno. A particular pleasure lies in the elongated titles of the tales. Here is an example: "The Tribulations of he Simple Husband Who Wanted Nothing More than to Eat Goose but was Denied this Delight by His Unfaithful Wife and Her Arrogant but Probably Handsome Lover" (17). Fables show up here in various ways. Sometimes a traditional fable shows up in slightly changed form. Thus TB (5) has a form of the La Fontaine version. In this form one of the two hunters has already sold a bearskin, while the other will wait to catch a bear first. The former, foolish hunter, encounters a bear, drops his gun, and falls to the ground pretending to be dead. This bear waters in his face before walking away! Asked what the bear has told him, the foolish hunter becomes less foolish and answers that the bear told him not to sell his skin before he gets it off the bear's body. The traditional fable about the traveler and satyr shows up here as the story of a man and a bear who were friends (7). New to me but like many fables is the story of the turtle who comes to the dying lion shot by hunters. The turtle curses those "who come to injure magnificent creatures of the earth like us" (8). Similarly, the rabbit tries to imitate the roaring lion, but only makes a squeak that alerts the fox to his presence. The fox comes and kills him easily (44). I do not think there is a bad story in the book. Maybe the best non-fable tells the story of the exchange between a crazy man and a king (64). The best joke might be that about the man who plays a cello with only one string and fingers the string in the same place. In response to his wife's observation that others play with four strings and move their fingers continuously, the man says that they are looking for the place and he has found it (76). There are larger illustrations on 19, 33, 47, 69, and 83.

1941 Tales from Storyland. Edited by Watty Piper. Illustrated by George and Doris Hauman. NY: Platt and Munk. See 1938/41.

1941 Tales from Storyland. Edited by Watty Piper. Illustrated by George and Doris Hauman. NY: Platt and Munk. See 1938/41/55.

1941/47 A New Aesop Tales. Translated by Gaishi Yamagishi. Published by Kazuo Ishikawa. Second edition. Kanda, Tokyo: Shufunotomo Company. ¥1500 at Miwa, Kanda, July, '96.

Here is a traditional Japanese book, with the now very delicate paper that Shoji tells me was regular for publishing in Japan soon after World War II. Sixty-five fables on some 352 pages. There are a some images, all occupying a full page and many very faint. I recognize two groups, one from Harrison Weir and the other from a simpler, apparently Western hand. I find illustrations on 6, 20, 39, 48, 53, 72, 95, 105, 143, 177, 185, 192, 200, 228, 242, 268, and 304. The North Wind and the Sun are pictured in color on the Japanese front-cover. The covers have a rubbery quality. This book has already lasted fifty years—not bad for something that cost about sixty cents!

1941/55 Aesop's Fables for Modern Readers. No editor acknowledged. Illustrated by Aldren Watson. Dust jacket. Mount Vernon, NY: Peter Pauper Press. $7 at Bookman's Alley, Evanston, Dec., '92. Extra copies for $6 at Goodspeed's basement store (inscribed 1958), June, '91; and for $3.50 from Renaissance, Nov., '92.

My, Peter Pauper Press has been busy getting mileage from their 1941 edition. This one is smaller in format, has sixty-one instead of ninety pages, and contains ninety-six of the 122 fables and almost all of the twenty illustrations. The illustrations here are slightly reduced and done in black and red rather than brown and green. The texts are slightly updated. Distinguish this edition from Eric Carle's 1965 edition by same publisher with the same name. Dust jacket on all three copies. No T of C or index.

1941/55/65 Aesop's Fables for Modern Readers. Illustrated by Eric Carle. Dust jacket. Mount Vernon: Peter Pauper Press. Yellow: $2.95. Extra copy without dust jacket for $3 from Shakespeare, Aug., '94. White: $2.50 at West Portal, San Francisco, Aug., '94. Extra copy without dust jacket for $3 from David Morrison, Portland, July, '93.

A valuable little book for its tellings and its morals. The block art by Eric Carle is neither extensive nor really unusual. I wish I knew who did the translations and morals here; they have their own spice. See the two other Peter Pauper editions copyrighted 1941. I will shelve both copies, since they use different colors throughout.

1941/69 Aesop's Fables. A New Version Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Boxed, with a recent copy of Heritage Club Sandglass introducing this book. Yellow cover. NY: The Heritage Press. $8 at Pageturners, Aug., '89.

This new edition has undergone a few changes, some of which might at first escape notice. We have a new yellow cover featuring the mice of TMCM in mirror-opposite poses on the front and back. The full-page illustrations have lost their second-color background. The last two of them, "The Farmer and the Snake" and "The Fighting Cocks," have simply been removed, along with the facing pages with a small design. As a result the last page is 130 here, 134 there. The ornate endpapers are gone. One can see that a few costs have been cut.

1941/69 Aesop's Fables. A New Version Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Boxed. Brown cover. NY: The Heritage Press. $10 at Estuary, Lincoln, Dec., '94.

The interior of this book seems identical with that of the boxed yellow version from the same publisher in the same year, except that the T of C gives "126" for "124" and is off by two pages for the rest of its listings. This book is also slightly thinner. Its brown cover recalls the original cover of this work. See my comments on the yellow-covered edition.

1941/76 Fables. By Shchedrin (Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov). Translated from the Russian by Vera Volkhovsky. Originally published in 1941 by Chatto and Windus, London. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. $5 at Academy Book Store, NY, Jan., '90.

Twenty-two highly political fables published at various times in Saltykov's life (1826-89). Though talky and longish, they are witty and often devastating. Some verge on Juvenal's satires. The translator's helpful introduction gives the social and political Sitz im Leben. "The Carp Who Was an Idealist" seems typical. "The Very Wise Minnow" speaks well of life as risk.

1941/79 Aesop's Fables: A New Version.   Written by Munro Leaf with Illustrations by Robert Lawson. Collector's Edition. Bound in genuine leather. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Norwalk, CT: Easton. $30 from Brattle Book Shop, June, '91. Extra copy with changes a gift from Daniel Gatti, S.J., Nov., '96. Another extra copy with a further change, from somewhere in about '99.

I finally broke down and picked up this fancy rendition of a book I have enjoyed very much. The cover is dramatic, the binding is made of buffalo, with moire endleaves and excellent paper--and I still like the art, particularly the full-page illustrations; in fact I like it here more than I did in the original 1941 edition! There is a newly commissioned frontispiece of Aesop by Gillian Tyler, as the newly added " Publisher's Preface " points out. I think my three copies may represent three stages in the publisher's history with the book. The Gatti copy does the frontispiece in brown, not black, and adds "The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written" to the title-page. Its covers have not the portrait of a fox but an abstract design, and its framing work on the cover and spine are done in egg-and-dart designs instead of arrows. My third copy drops the title page's reference to "The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written," perhaps because Easton's series grew beyond one hundred. What a thoughtful gift!

1942 (More than 30 of) American Childhood's Best Books. Ages 4 and Up to 8. Selected and arranged by Mary Perks. No general illustrator acknowledged. A Mary Perks Book. Sandusky, Ohio: The American Crayon Co. $15 at Magers & Quinn, Minneapolis, Jan., '99. Extra copy for $4 from Pageturners, Omaha, Jan., '89.

Five fables are buried from 133 to 140 in the middle of this ready-to-be-crayoned book with its simple illustrations. Of the five, three are further used in Best Nursery Tales (1943) and the other two are used in Ten Treasured Tales (1943). And the section in which they are used in Best Nursery Tales is called "Ten Treasured Tales," though I have not been able to count them. Dear reader, are you confused yet? AI at the beginning.

1942 African Aesop, Containing "The Little Wise One" and "Kalulu the Hare". Written and illustrated by Frank Worthington. Signed by the author. 1942 reprinting. Hardbound. Printed in Great Britain. London/Glasgow: Wm. Collins and Co. See 1939/42.

1942 Fables: Aesop and Others. An Anthology of the Fabulists of All Countries. Edited by Ernest Rhys. Everyman's Library for Young People. London: J.M. Dent/New York: E.P. Dutton. See 1913/42.

1942 Fábulas sin Moraleja y Finales Cuentos. Francisco Monterde. Linoleum cuts by Julio Prieto. Paperbound. Dust jacket. Mexico City?: University of Mexico Press. $40 from Paper Moon Bookstore, Portland, OR, March, '96.

Here is a paperbound version in good condition of a book whose hardbound version I have already listed. The fables section of this surprising book (3-62) includes six fables from Aesop, seven from Iriarte, eight from La Fontaine, and six from José Rosas (Moreno?). "Finales de Cuentos" includes sections given to Vanegas Arroyo, Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, De las Mil y Una Noches, and a final group of stories including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Rip van Winkle, Pinochio, Peter Pan, and Alice. One surprise for me lies in the nice linoleum cuts, one to a fable. Among the best of these are OF (7), the monkey and the magpie (21), the monkey dressed in silk (27), and the young and old rat at a trap (55). The other surprise is that the versions of traditional stories presented here are often creative. They tend to take the traditional version for granted and to offer a creative reinterpretation or extension of its events. For example, the ox stooping down to drink happens to puncture the expanded skin of the bloated frog in OF (7-8). In Monterde's version of AD, the dove brings back to the hunter the misfired arrow, and the hunter, surprised, forgets about his pain and the ant (9-10). The telling here of the fable of the mountain and mouse involves the history of the mouse, who has fled from the city's dogs and cats and who thinks that the rumbling of the mountains is the barking of dogs. Only the fabulist notices the mouse, while everybody else is looking for the son of the noisy mountains (13-14). The trusting cicada had hoped for something from the ant, and he loses his transparent wings. The smug ant finds the cicada singing the same song the next spring as he had last summer (33-34). The fox who jumps into the well to get the "cheese" is the same fox who just wheedled a cheese out of the crow (35-36). Only one of the three sons gets his father's idea and works the land energetically (37-38). WC is about the second time that the wolf has something caught in his throat; remembering the first time, the crane gets the wolf lodged between the limbs of a tree and then calls the townpeople to take vengeance on him (39-40). The donkey in a lion's skin meets other donkeys and fears that they are lions in donkey skins! The other donkeys fear that this is a lion tricking them by imitating their braying (41-42). With this creative work on the fables, I can only imagine what kinds of endings Monterde gives to the other traditional stories!

1942 Fábulas sin Moraleja y Finales Cuentos. Francisco Monterde. Linoleum cuts by Julio Prieto. Hardbound. Mexico City?: University of Mexico Press. $10 from Mostly Books, Pittsburgh, Kansas, Jan., '98.

The fables section of this surprising book (3-62) includes six fables from Aesop, seven from Iriarte, eight from La Fontaine, and six from José Rosas (Moreno?). "Finales de Cuentos" includes sections given to Vanegas Arroyo, Perrault, Grimm, Andersen, De las Mil y Una Noches, and a final group of stories including Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Rip van Winkle, Pinochio, Peter Pan, and Alice. One surprise for me lies in the nice linoleum cuts, one to a fable. Among the best of these are OF (7), the monkey and the magpie (21), the monkey dressed in silk (27), and the young and old rat at a trap (55). The other surprise is that the versions of traditional stories presented here are often creative. They tend to take the traditional version for granted and to offer a creative reinterpretation or extension of its events. For example, the ox stooping down to drink happens to puncture the expanded skin of the bloated frog in OF (7-8). In Monterde's version of AD, the dove brings back to the hunter the misfired arrow, and the hunter, surprised, forgets about his pain and the ant (9-10). The telling here of the fable of the mountain and mouse involves the history of the mouse, who has fled from the city's dogs and cats and who thinks that the rumbling of the mountains is the barking of dogs. Only the fabulist notices the mouse, while everybody else is looking for the son of the noisy mountains (13-14). The trusting cicada had hoped for something from the ant, and he loses his transparent wings. The smug ant finds the cicada singing the same song the next spring as he had last summer (33-34). The fox who jumps into the well to get the "cheese" is the same fox who just wheedled a cheese out of the crow (35-36). Only one of the three sons gets his father's idea and works the land energetically (37-38). WC is about the second time that the wolf has something caught in his throat; remembering the first time, the crane gets the wolf lodged between the limbs of a tree and then calls the townpeople to take vengeance on him (39-40). The donkey in a lion's skin meets other donkeys and fears that they are lions in donkey skins! The other donkeys fear that this is a lion tricking them by imitating their braying (41-42). With this creative work on the fables, I can only imagine what kinds of endings Monterde gives to the other traditional stories! Formerly in the Pittsburgh, Kansas, Public Library. Apparently no one ever took the book out! The spine is starting to separate from the covers.

1942 Favorite Stories Old and New. Selected by Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg. Illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Dust jacket. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Co. $8 at Blake Books, Nov., '95.

Five fables in a fifteen-page section with rudimentary illustrations, which are gathered together on the section's title-page (275). The editor is not mentioned, nor can I find him in the beginning acknowledgements. FG has birds who jeer and understand why the fox says the grapes are sour. The dust jacket contains a wartime disclaimer about government regulations.

1942 Favorite Stories Old and New. Selected by Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg. Illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. $1 at McDonald's Bookstore, San Francisco, Dec., '86.

This edition is thinner than the adjacent book done, apparently, by Doubleday's predecessor. The cover of this edition has the same designs as that, done in both cases in yellow/green against a blue background.

1942 Finger Fables: A Child's Very First Technic Book. By Lee Corbman. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Cincinnati: The Willis Music Company. $3.09 from Sandra Farina, Gallon, OH, through eBay, May, '03.

The heart of this forty-page, landscape-formatted pamphlet consists in fourteen exercises for learning piano. These have names like "See-Saw," "Aeroplanes, No. 1," and "The Roller Coaster." The closest connection with fables that I can find is that several exercises are named after nursery rhymes, like "Mary-Mary," "Tommy Tucker," and "Jack Be Nimble." This approach to learning hand and finger movements looks engaging and creative.

1942 Mr. Lincoln's Funybone: Wherein the White House Joker Retells His Best Yarns and Fables. Edited by Loyd Dunning. Illustrated by Oscar Ogg. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: Howell, Soskin. $23 from Alibris, March, '00. 

It has taken me more than four years to get around to cataloguing this book. It is a breezy book of 136 pages, including a bibliography at the end. Each anecdote begins on a page of its own. A number of the stories are fables. A young man wants to marry the farmer's daughter and cries out to the farmer in the field "I want your daughter." The farmer answers "Take her" and the man walks away shaking his head and saying "It's too durned easy" (12). A hog charges two boys. One goes up a tree. The other catches the hog by the tail and shouts to his friend to help him. "Help you what?" Answer: "Help me let go of this damned hog!" (27). More of the stories strike me as good jokes, like that of the teacher who is about to punish a boy with dirty hands. "If you can show me any other hand in this room as filthy as that, I will let you off." The boy promptly produces from behind his back his other hand (109)! One of the stories uses GGE as the basis for a cartoon over which Lincoln and Secretary (of the Treasury?) Chase have a laugh. The golden goose of the cartoon takes gold coins and turns them into greenbacks. Had Chase perhaps called for the first-time issuance of paper money?

1942 Our Story Book. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Akron: Saalfield Publishing Co. $1.75 at Harold's Book Shop in St. Paul, July, '89.

A cheap paperbound book on poor paper. Compare with the smaller To Storyland (1942) for the identical TMCM described as an old English tale. Also "The Cats and the Monkey," "The Timid Little Rabbit," and "The Hare and the Hedgehog Run a Race."

1942 Picture Tales from India. Berta Metzger. Illustrations by Mina Buchanan. Philadelphia: Frederick A. Stokes Company. $20 from Book Discoveries, Nashville, April, '96.

A small oblong book by the same publisher and in roughly the same format as Carrick's books of Russian stories. Here there are twenty stories, seven of which are, I believe, traditionally viewed as fables: "The Blind Men and the Elephant" (13), "The Monkey and the Crocodile" (18), "The Ungrateful Dog" (57), "The Princes Who Were Blockheads" (63, the introduction to the Panchatantra), TT (66), "The Helpful Bird and the Monkeys" (72, differently told, since the bird here seems to be in the right), and DLS (84, in the Indian style, according to which the skin-disguise was the master's idea). There are one or two simple illustrations for each story. There is a T of C on 7.

1942 Russian Fables of Ivan Krylov. With Verse Translation by Bernard Pares. Russian and English Text. Hammondsworth: Penguin Books. $10 through Bibliofind from Pandora's Books, Neche ND.

I am amazed to see this bilingual Russian/English Penguin published during the war. The English is identical, in the instances I have checked, with Pares' Cape edition (1926) and my Harcourt edition (1926/26?). The Cape edition is mentioned here only as one of Pares' books about Russia. Where those editions have 201 fables, this has 108. The book includes at its beginning a photo, short biography, AI in both languages, and introduction to Krylov. See my comments on the Harcourt edition.

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Cloth-like paper edition, #407. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $5 at Cedar Creek Antiques, July, '91.

This paper edition is in the poorest condition of the four different editions I have of this nice oversized booklet. The cover picture matches that of the paper edition (#2912). Like the two copies of #476, this is called "clothlike." Multiple threats occur in the city house: the cook, a trap, the cat, and the dog. Is it not amazing to find four different versions of the same book?

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Cloth-like, #476. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $15 at Maelstrom, San Francisco, June, '89. Earlier copy with gray binding in poor condition and lacking last page for $2 at Rummage-o-rama, Jan., '88.

The unusual paper--indeed cloth-like--is the big feature of this nice large book. My first copy with the brown binding is in good condition. Multiple threats occur in the city house: from the cook, a trap, the cat, the dog. Is it not amazing to find four different versions of the same book?

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Hardbound, #780. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $6 at Normal's, Baltimore, Nov., '91.

This hardbound version takes the first page and repeats it twice as its covers. It thus has a different cover from all the other versions. Multiple threats occur in the city house: from the cook, a trap, the cat, and the dog. Is it not amazing to find four different versions of the same book?

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Spiralbound, #780. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $23 by mail from Swiss Village Book Store, St. Louis, Sept., '97.

In terms of printing, this version is identical with the hardbound #780. See my comments there. The pages of this book have a different, honeycombed kind of paper. The first page is separate from the binding, and the others are loose after fifty years of wear. The second-last page is torn, and someone has pencilled over a few pages and the country mouse's eye on the very last page. I now count eight versions that I have found of the same simple book!

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Cloth-like paper edition, #2407. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $3.50 at Bookworks, Chicago, Sept., '93. One extra copy for $15 from James & Mary Laurie, Jan., '97. Another extra copy without "Cloth-like" on the back cover and with cheaper paper and only one staple, a gift of Linda Schlafer from Puffabelly Station, McLean, IL, April, '95.

I cannot believe the various editions of this book that I am finding! I think this makes the sixth. It seems to replicate #407 perfectly in terms of the sequence of pictures. Is it perhaps a more recent version of it? This book is in any case in good condition. Has the text printing changed somehow from #407 to this edition? The Laurie copy adds lovely colored designs behind the printing on the bottom of the page; they echo the larger pictures nicely. This copy has some (water?) damage at the bottom of its pages. I'll keep all three in the collection. Someday I will meet a Saalfield historian and get more clarity on the family tree of this booklet!

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Paper, #2912. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $15 at Margolis & Moss, Santa Fe, May, '93.

This regular paper edition is in the best condition of the four editions I have. It drops four of the interior pages found in the other editions. Multiple threats occur in the city house: from the cook, a trap, the cat, and the dog. Is it not amazing to find four different versions of the same book?

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Cloth-like. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $13.50 at Prince & Pauper, Aug., '93. Extra for $6 at Cal's, Portland, Aug., '93.

Now I find the fifth version of this book! I stopped by Cal's for nostalgic reasons and was delighted to find this booklet there and to bargain for it with the daughter of the now deceased owners whom I had met some years ago. This cloth-like version is about 7" by 8", whereas the other versions are about 12.5" by 10". This version skips about three of the illustrations in the normal series, including two of the most general images of food. My two copies have distinctly different inkings of both text and pictures. "Cloth-like" is at different positions on the covers.

1942 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. Illustrated by Ethel Hays. Akron: Saalfield Pub. Co. $3.50 at Harold's Book Shop, St. Paul, June, '95.

I thought I had run out of possible variations on this book! This version is the same size as the small, 7" by 8" version, but it is not cloth-like and is not marked as such. See my comments on that version. This copy has heavy crayoning on its third page.

1942 To Storyland. Stories and Verses Illustrated. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Akron: Saalfield Publishing Co. $1.25 from Harold's Book Shop in St. Paul, July, '89.

This big paperbound book on cheap paper includes TMCM in its first half, labelled as "An English Tale." Some earlier owner "colored" a few of the last pictures in the volume.

1942/55 Favorite Stories Old and New. Revised and Enlarged Edition. Selected by Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg. Illustrated by Kurt Wiese. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. $4.50 at Cottonwood Books, Baton Rouge, April, '88.

The fable section (403) remains unchanged from the previous listing in this second edition. The book comes out much fatter!

1942? A Book of Fables. Adapted from Aesop by Sheila Hawkins. Sidways pamphlet. Hammondsworth, Middlesex, and NY: Puffin Picture Books: Penguin Books Limited. 10 Pounds from John Williams, Children's and Illustrated Books, Swindon, Wiltshire, through ABE, Jan., '00.

See "1950?" Harlequin books for a later issue of this pamphlet. The dealer has assigned this a date of 1942. I do not see it printed anywhere in the booklet. Notice the number of war books offered in the Puffin Picture Books, like "War on Land," "Great Deeds of the War," and "The Battle of Britain." This edition offers on the inside front cover the left-side completion of the MSA picture. The paper is heavier here than there, and so the colored illustrations are of higher quality. I will repeat my pertinent comments from there: A sideways pamphlet of fifteen fables alternating black-and-white and colored pairs of pages. Some fascinating and different details: A boy scout chides the son for riding the donkey. The old man tips the donkey into a duck pond and goes home without it. The happy donkey has a good splash and trots away to the fields. The cow swallows the frog by accident. The hedgehog's arrival forces the fox to declare the grapes sour. New to me: "The Cowardly Pig." The best illustration is of the proud bull frog.

1942? Le Dessin Surprise avec les Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Kermorver. Paperboards. Editions Albin Michel. $11.50 from Du Plooy Books, Los Angeles, Oct., '97.

For each of fifteen fables, there is a text and standard gray-and-black design on the left-hand page and then a paint-by-symbols puzzle on the right side. Several of the puzzles have been started. Here is yet one more creative way of going at fables! How can one best render that title? Perhaps "Surprising Designs Based on La Fontaine's Fables"?

1943 Aesop: A Novel. A.D. Wintle. Second impression before publication. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Second impression before publication. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. $25 from Conrad N. Trout, The Book Guardian, Kansas City, MO, March, '99. 

I enjoyed reading this book straight through on a train trip. It adheres well to the standard "novel" of Aesop's life, with the exception of the scurrilous and obscene parts. If it has a particular focus, it is the anti-oracular character of Aesop's knowing. There are helpful additions, particularly of the characters Baidan and Yuzzat, shepherds whom Aesop meets together. Baidan is a jolly character who shares Aesop's curiosity and his sense of a good story. Yuzzat is envious and ugly from the start. In fact, Yuzzat as a priest at Delphi sees to Aesop's death. Baidan arrives just too late. He seizes Yuzzat and together they go over the same cliff off of which Aesop has just been hurled. The story starts with Aesop's touching last day with his mother Larissa. This account takes some liberty with the story when it has Aesop learn to communicate in his own fashion early in his career with a few people like Larissa and Baidan. This biographical account weaves in many more of Aesop's fables than the standard novel does. I also do not remember from the normal novel mention that Croesus, taught by Aesop, uses his gold for benefactions and good works. "Second impression before publication" is on the back of the title-page. I wonder how many books England was printing in 1943.

1943 As Aesop would say: Fables. By George S. Clason. Denver: Financial Education Publishers. $1.50 at Bargain Books, San Diego, Aug., '93.

Six fables in a pamphlet that constitutes a major find. There is something weird going on in this book. I have never seen before these fables "of Babylon," "of Greece," "of India," and "of Egypt." In the first a disfigured Aesop speaks the language of Babylon before its irascible king. A story about a plucked crow proves that he is happier and more fortunate than his feathered fellows. H.G. Miller's engraving of the plucked crow on 7 is fun. "The Eagle seeks a Mate" dramatizes its moral well: "You cannot change human nature with a few singing lessons" (11). The edge of some strong ideology becomes apparent in "The Beggar and the Horse." Its moral is "Give a beggar a horse and he will ride it to death" (13). Not exactly a moral to stir social reform! "The Prince and the Tiger Jungles" is a good strong story about the price of greed: "A long time and much thought and labor are required to turn a tiger jungle into a prosperous estate but very little work and only a short time is required to turn a prosperous estate back into a tiger jungle." "The Fox and the Oxen" dramatizes, not surprisingly, the basic law of capitalism: individual reward for personal effort is the magic ingredient always omitted in socialistic experiments.

1943 Bajky. Vaclev Riha. Illustrator:Prokop Laichter? Hardbound. Dust jacket. Fourth printing. Printed in Prague. Prague: Zen Z Literatur Svazek IX: Vydal Jan Laichter. $6 from Zachary Cohn, Prague, Oct., ‘01.

The special gift of this book lies in the clever initials for its thirty fables. Animals play and maneuver around the letters. I am surprised first of all that a book like this was published in the war years and then that it made it to this day in fine condition. The cover illustration of Doctor Stork with a sick fox is already fun, especially since there is a dead chicken lying behind the fox. There is a T of C at the back.

1943 Best Nursery Tales. A Mary Perks Book. Copyright John Sherman Bagg. Dust jacket. Sandusky, Ohio: The American Crayon Co. $7 at Curiouser & Curiouser, Santa Fe, May, '93.

Aesop comes in for two short tales: LM and FG. Their source seems to be (More than 30 of) American Childhood's Best Books (1942). Each gets one black-and-chartreuse drawing. Note the end-papers: there you will see a picture of TH, one of the three stories from that source that is not included here. All three are included in Ten Treasured Tales (1943), the name of one of the sections of this book. In fact the sections of this unpaginated book, listed on the back cover, and the book's Roman numerals present several challenges for the reader.

1943    El Libro de las Fábulas: Recopilación de las más famosas fábulas de Samaniego, La Fontaine, Iriarte, Hartzembusch, etc.  Ilustraciones de Llaverías.  Hardbound.  Printed in Spain.  Barcelona: Editorial Juventud.  See 1930/1943.

1943 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par Jean de la Fontaine. Illustrées de lithographies par Henri Deluermoz. #63 of 130 copies, brochure, boxed. Paris: Le Livre Contemporain. $250 from Librairie "Ici Aussi," Paris, Jan., '02.

Deluermoz died in November of 1943. He had finished lithographs for the first twenty-five of the fifty fables of La Fontaine here. The last twenty-five, according to the colophon, have been illustrated after Deluermoz' original designs, reproduced by L. Maccard and printed by Georges Leblanc under the artistic direction of Georges Gobo. The first twenty-five had been printed by G. Dorfinant. Thus the title-page gives 1943 as the year of publication, but the colophon indicates that the book was completed in 1944. The lithographs, strong on tans and browns, include one larger half-page illustration per fable and, usually, one smaller design at the fable's end. This copy (Number 63) was printed for Monsieur Marcel Funereau. As strong as the lithorgraphs are, I find in them little specific insight into the fables. For me the most attractive of the large designs are the simplest, like "Le Berger et la Mer" on 41, "L'Ane et le petit Chien" on 57, and "Les Deux Chèvres" on 98. The one exception to this observation may be "Le Cheval et le Loup" on 68: it suggests the kick to the jaw very effectively! My eye is caught by the concluding designs, like the spider's web in the spidery tree on 16: it has caught the proud mosquito who triumphed over the lion. Again, I enjoy the desperate ass and rider from SS on 21. There is a T of C at the end. How many art books were being produced in Paris in 1943 and 1944?

1943 Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. James Thurber. Dust jacket. Large format. Garden City: Blue Ribbon Books. $6 at Strand, Feb., '88. Extra copy without dust jacket for $12 from Old Books and Curiosities, Bay St. Louis, MS, Aug., '96.

This book replicates the original 1940 edition by Harper; see my comments there. It is the same large size as that work. The good copy has an advertisement for war bonds on the back flyleaf. Numbers on both flyleaves of the good copy's dust jacket suggest that they were printed in 1942. See a different edition of this work by Harper (the original publisher) under "1951?".

1943 Fables for Our Time and Famous Poems Illustrated. James Thurber. Dust jacket. Smaller format. Garden City: Blue Ribbon Books. $5 at The Old Book Corner, Racine, Oct., '94. One extra copy for $5 from Adams, Georgetown, Aug., '91.

These books are slightly smaller than the 1940 Harper first edition and than the 1943 Blue Ribbon edition. The colophon pages on the back of the title page are different in these two editions. In the Adams copy, the first and last illustrations are colored in. However he is delivered, Thurber is a classic! Wonderful drawings.

1943 Fables from Russia. By Ivan Krilov. Adapted by Stella Mead. Illustrated by Grace Huxtable. Dust jacket. Chameleon Books 22. London: Oxford University Press. $10.50 from Meandaur, June, '93. Extra copy in fair condition for DEM 36 from Kunstantiquariat Joachim Lührs, Hamburg, June, '98.

Sixty-eight fables in a very nice thin little volume with simple engravings. T of C on 9-10. Many of Krilov's fables seem to be entirely conversation; an example is "Cuckoo and Dove" (58). The best of the fables here are "The Leader" (14), "The Wolf in Distress" (23), "The Miser and the Treasure" (25), "The Pike who Served a Fox" (37), "The Elephant in Favour" (39), "The Musicians" (usually "Quartet," 45), "The Sheep and the Wolves" (53), "The Swan, the Pike, and the Crab" (60), and "The Monkey and the Spectacles" (63).

1943 Fabulas. Monteiro Lobato. Desenhos de (Kurt) Wiese. Hardbound. 9th edition. Sao Paulo: Literatura Infantil: Biblioteca Pedagogical Brasileira, Series 1, Vol. 34: Companhia Editora Nacional. $25 from Turtle Island, August, '98.

Color illustrated paper boards. Seventy-three fables on 157 pages. My impression is that some develop from Aesop (e.g., "A Cigarra e as duas Formigas," 9), while most are pretty straightforwardly Aesopic (e.g., "A Galinha dos Ovos de Ouro," 133).

1943 Happy Children. Child Experience Readers. Benjamin Sallen, John J. Loftus, Myron Goldin, and Helen Hay Heyl. Illustrated by Miriam Story Hurford and A.F. Hurford. Chicago: Lyons & Carnahan. $1 in Omaha, Jan., '89.

The last section of this very early school reader is "Story Time" on 155. It turns out to contain two fables in three stories. I enjoy school art in this style, perhaps because I grew up with it!

1943 Homme, le Bipède: Fables de la Fontaine a Colorier. Textes établis par Robert E. Llewellyn. Images de Jean Simard. Paperbound. Montreal: Les Éditions Variétés. $5 from Sharon Day, Canada, through eBay, Sept., '04. 

This large-format pamphlet presents three of La Fontaine's fables for coloring. TB uses cave men; the prose story here follows La Fontaine's version in having the two men sell the bearskin before they have hunted and killed the bear. The two encounter the bear "nez à nez" and drop their clubs. The bear here chases one man up a tree. This version does not include La Fontaine's closing joke, namely that the tree-climber asks what the bear had said to the traveler who pretends to be dead, and that the latter answers that the bear advised him not to sell skins of bears that are not yet killed. MSA has a fine set of matching illustrations on the left for the various stages of the tale. "The Cobbler and the Banker" contrasts a musical staff with a set of (Canadian and US?) dollar signs. In each case, La Fontaine's verse text follows the presentation of the story.

1943 Jungletown Tales. By C. Nelson. Drawings by Biro. Second impression. Dust jacket. Hardbound. London: The Sylvan Press. £15 from Karen Stuckey Books, Frame, SO, UK, August, '00. 

I am surprised that a book like this was produced in London in 1943. It is an enjoyable children's story of six chapters about life in a small African town inhabited by animals, particularly around their schoolhouse. Several of the chapters build directly off of fables. Thus the flyleaf proclaims "Jungle Town Tales show that an African setting has brought little change to Aesop's Fables." Yellow unnumbered pages of monotone pictures of characters are inserted between the surprisingly thick, stiff pages. The first chapter features mention of Aesop's TH and has a race between Algy the hare and Elmer the tortoise. This turns into a case of the tricker being tricked. Chapter II features Jerry the ostrich, who outwits Sammy the detestable monkey by gaining the rights to the oil in Sammy's property. I cannot find any relation to a known fable here. Chapter III does a turn on GGE. A wise-guy young swan tricks his overbearing mother into making a mistake about things that glisten but are not gold. Chapter IV uses "Lohengrin" rather than a fable to make fun of the self-centered swan Cecilia, who does not render her part well in the opera. Chapter V deals with several clever reversals unrelated to fables. An elephant forgets his cue and spoils a performance of "Aida." A self-centered giraffe is taken for a maypole of candy. Chapter VI brings the end of the school term and of the book.

1943 La Fontaine: Fables. Hardbound. Beirut: Les Classiques Françaises: La Societé d'Éditions "Les Lettres Françaises". €1 from Ielkin, Ventere, France, through eBay.fr, Oct., '07.

Here is a curious little book which I happened to pick up because I wanted the books with which it was joined on eBay. It is a standard pair of French paperback volumes bound together in a leather cover, offering the first and last six books, respectively, of La Fontaine's fables. There is a lexicon, AI, and TofC at the back of either volume. A portrait of La Fontaine and a picture of his home are the books' only ornamentation. The surprise comes in that this was a wartime production done by a press in Cairo for a society in Beirut. The press in Cairo is the "Imprimerie de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale." Fables get around and persist even in hard times! The French will have their La Fontaine, even when wars are going on. At one euro, the price was right.

1943 Oriental Fable Talk. By Abdo Haddad. Introduction by Arnold Kenseth. #12 of 50 signed by Haddad; 400 copies were printed in all. Paperbound. Boston: The Warren Press. $35 from Antic Hay Books, Asbury Park, NJ, Feb., '08.

This 32-page pamphlet contains narrative poems. One, "The Bunch of Twigs" (26), is a standard Aesopic fable. Others are fables representing Aesopic and Eastern themes, or even both at once. A directly Aesopic motif works in the story of harlots stolen first by one band of brigands and then another (14); one harlot wisely says to another in effect what Aesop's ass says to his owner: "What difference is there if you change your owner's name?" A cook brings to court a man who "stole" by smelling his delicious foods (7); the judge has the defendant jingle coins: "Since this/Man by nose thy food did steal;/Thou by ear his dirhems feel." A chemist-philosopher breeds a particular species of dogs and tries to straighten their curly tails. Finally he bottles up a tail in straight form for forty years. When he extracts the tail, it springs back into curly form (9). A kindly man rescues a rat and pampers it, but it languishes (11); a wise physician counsels him "To the dung-heap let him go!/Fancies fail to keep alive/Those who on but dung must thrive!" There may be something I misunderstand in the engaging story of a man who violated another's harem. As the latter pursues the former through crowded streets, the perpetrator grabs a handful of rice and convinces people to help him since he, hungry, has only stolen a handful of rice (12). For some reason, the victim cannot reveal the real reason for his pursuit of the wrongdoer. Is "The Plight of Farosh" (15) about protecting one's daughter so well that she gets pregnant by one's son? My favorite story here concerns a jester who pleads with God for 100 pieces of gold (16-17). The miser next door tosses from above a sack of 99 gold pieces. The jester tells God he will trust God for the missing one. The miser expected to get his money back after the joke, and so he sues the jester. When the jester feigns illness, the miser, to get him to court, gives him first his donkey to ride and then his cane to use. Before the judge, the jester says "Next he will be claiming my donkey and my cane." When the miser does just that, the judge decides in the jester's favor, saying about the miser "Throw outside/This pretender who is claiming/Every thing this man is naming!" The needs of rhythm and rhyme play havoc here with word order, especially when predicates start sentences, as here: "Smiled the wise physician, nodding" (11). The introduction rightly suggests that the stories of Yunan (24) and Musa (25) derive from biblical stories of Jonah and Moses.

1943 Sandman Stories. To read and tell. Chicago: The Merrill Publishing Company. $7.70 at Blake, Milwaukee, Nov., '95.

A large-format, clothlike book that includes two fables: "Elephant and the Whale" (in which the rabbit proves to each that he is stronger) and "Rabbit and the Porcupine." The presentation makes the stories cute both visually and verbally.

1943 Ten Treasured Tales. A Mary Perks Book. Copyright John Sherman Bagg. Sandusky, Ohio: The American Crayon Co. $5, Dec., '87.

Aesop comes in for three short tales: BW, DS, and TH. Their source seems to be (More than 30 of) American Childhood's Best Books ('42). The first and the last get one black-and-yellow drawing each. Note the end-papers: there you will see a picture of FG, and the story is not included here! It is included in Best Nursery Tales (1943), which has a section named "Ten Treasured Tales."

1943 The Fables of Aesop. Illustrated by Charles H. Bennett. Miniature. Jamaica: Edmund S. Wood: Minia Press. $20 from Dorothy Chesko at Old Delavan Book Company, July, '88.

Lovely old--but rather fragile and beaten--miniature about an inch square. Several Heighway drawings are pirated in besides the approximately twenty drawings from Bennett.

1943 The Fables of La Fontaine. Translated by Dorothy E. Jonnes. Signed, #92 of 150. Paperbound. Circleville, OH: Dorothy E. Jonnes. $40 from Hoffman's Bookshop, Columbus, OH, August, '02. 

There are verse translations of fifteen of La Fontaine's fables here. I find the second, "Council Held by the Rats" (4), particularly effective. I had forgotten that in La Fontaine the "belling" idea comes from "their eldest, a prudent person." This translator seems to take a bat to be equivalent to a bald-pated mouse (11). As always, I enjoy La Fontaine's version of SS (13-14). There are dramatic initials and a printer's mark on the final colophon page.

1943 The Sun and the Wind and Mr. Todd. By Eleanor Estes. Illustrated by Louis Slobodkin. Hardbound. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company. $60 from Books and Less, Janesville, WI, August, '02. 

The Prologue to this book is SW, told in the poorer version. The issue is described this way: "whichever soonest made a traveler take off his cloak should be accounted the more powerful." A paragraph just after the prologue asks "But what about the little man who was the innocent victim of that Olympic battle? This is the story of that little man and it is dedicated to him, and to all little men, buffeted hither and yon by forces beyond their control." It not by chance, I think, that this book appears in wartime. Three chapters tell of Mr. Todd's troubled occupation, of his encounter with the sun and wind, and of his report on his experience to a learned convention of weathermen. Mr. Todd is a weatherman, like his father and grandfather. Unlike them, he is not very good at predicting the weather in his newspaper column for the little town of Rockypoint. As Mr. Todd walks to a convention of weathermen, he becomes the target of the sun and wind argument in Chapter 2. I find it surprising that a book can play out the story in such detail and not rethink the fable. Why would a person ever take off a coat because it gets windy? Credibility gets further strained, I believe, when readers find, in short succession, that the wind goes around the world seven times in a rage and that nothing around Mr. Todd is disturbed by the fierce wind that assails him. In Chapter 3, he is greeted at the convention as a great weatherman. He tells of his experience, first blustering and creating animosity and then persuading and creating a warm reception. The theory he proposes is that weather is not the same for everybody. Even his worst predictions are thus true for somebody. He becomes the hero of weathermen at the convention and beyond. Generally every second page contains a large brown monochrome sketch illustration of the story. For me, the storytelling here is disappointing.

1943 The Wild Geese and Other Russian Fables. Collected by M. Bulatov. Translated by V. de S. Pinto. Illustrations from the Russian by Y. Vasnetzov and K. Kuznetzov. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Great Britain. London & NY: Transatlantic Arts Ltd. £30 from Unicorn Books, Hatch End, Middlesex, England, April, '98. Extra copy for $3 from Heathfield Books, Holt, Norfolk, UK, through ABE, April, '00.

This large-format (8½" x 11") book gets a great deal onto one page! There are eighteen stories on 72 pages, with some eleven full-page colored illustrations, four black-and-white full-page illustrations, and about nineteen less-than-full-page illustrations. The stories are principally folk tales with a good measure of magic, and a frequent dynamic in them is that of the story which presents the same action several times over. Thus, in the very last story, "The Hare, the Fox and the Cock," the fox takes over the hare's home. First some dogs agree to get the fox out, only to be frightened by him. The same happens with an ox. Finally a cock volunteers to get the fox out, but the hare now believes that he cannot do it. The cock does--in fact cuts him to pieces with a scythe! There are also several nursery rhymes. The closest in fact to fables are two: "The Crane and the Heron" (36) and "The Cat and the Fox" (47). The former keep asking each other to marry, only to be refused; they never do agree on it at the same time. Together the latter, who have married each other, convince all sorts of animals that the cat, "Prince Kattophy," is to be feared. Of all the stories and illustrations, I like "The Animals in Winter Quarters" (38) best. Also good is the illustration (49) for "The Cat and the Fox." The extra copy has seen rough handling since 1943, though its texts and illustrations are still fine. Its covers are creased and bent, and the inside rear cover is torn along the crease. Because the color placement is poor on at least two of the illustrations in the good copy (33 and 40), I will keep both copies in the collection.

1943 6 Fables de Jean de La Fontaine. Présentées par Paul G. Klein. Portfolio. Grenoble: Editions Marcel Besson. £15 from Ray Hennessey Bookseller, Crowborough, UK, by mail, Oct., '01.

This is a quarto card folder with illustrated paper covers. It contains six double-folded blue pages with a title on the front of each page. The center pages have text and full-page colored illustrations, with more text following on the last page. A seventh card is a letter to children about the fables. The fables presented are FC, GA, TH, "Le Rat qui s'est retiré du monde," OF, and FG. The cards themselves are in excellent condition, while the card folder shows some wear. The colored art is lively! For a great sample, enjoy "Le Rat qui s'est retiré du monde" and the cover's presentation of all the characters. Each fable also gets a lively multi-colored initial and a monochrome tailpiece. The best initials may be the exploding frog in the "U" and the "M" on which the crow perches. My favorite tailpiece shows the victorious turtle. This is so close to a book that I think it most naturally belongs among the books in this collection. My, the beautiful things one finds!

1944 a Fox & a Sick Lion. With an original wood-cut by Joseph Low. No. 54 in the Fables of Aesop & other Eminent Mythologists by Sir Roger L'Estrange. Bloomington: Corydon Press, Indiana University. $150 from Joseph A. Haller, S.J., May, '92.

A beautifully executed and preserved piece of work. L'Estrange's version is typically direct and involving. Low's colored wood-cut is bold and dramatic. For more of his work, see Harvest of World Folk Tales (1949/55).

1944 Aesop's Fables. Edited and Rewritten by Elizabeth Stones. Illustrated by Emery Kelen. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: The Hyperion Press. $8 from Shirley Korobkin, Old Orchard Beach, ME, through Ebay, March, '00. Extra copy for $4 at Midway, St. Paul, Nov., '92.

A fine book. I am surprised that I have never seen it before. Seventy-eight fables, enhanced by twenty-four full-color and many black-and-white illustrations, somewhat after the fashion of Fritz Kredel. The best of the colored illustrations are of FS (19), the bear and the bees (41), LM (45), and the monkey and and the camel (49). Several times (5 and 10, 19 and 20) one image is developed or taken from another. Do not miss the end-papers, which offer a colorful melange of fable characters excerpted from the colored illustrations. " Doctor Toad " (26) is especially well told. The first story's illustration (rooftop) does not match its version (tree, 5). The frog forgot that the mouse could not swim and so drowned him by mistake (15). The donkey who tries to live on dew in order to sing like a grasshopper almost dies (24). The AI at the end of the book mistakenly gives 65 instead of 45 for LM. Neither copy is in very good condition.

1944 Animals, Plants, and Machines. Lucy Sprague Mitchell and Margaret Wise Brown. Educational Consultant Blanche Kent Verbeck. Illustrator Clare Bice. Our Growing World Series. Boston: D.C. Heath and Company. $1.98 at Half-Price, Berkeley, Aug., '94.

This is a schoolbook as I remember schoolbooks! Nicely colored pictures with outlines not too sharp highlight simple texts about progress and trains and tractors. One fable, "The Rooster and the Pearl," comes up--somewhat awkwardly, I would say--in the context of corn (115). There is no moralizing conclusion, and the picture shows an elderly grocery-store-keeper holding the pearl. This book has been at Parkside School and at Holy Rosary Mission in Alaska.

1944 Bed-Time Nursery Book. Stories Retold by Frances Cavanah and Elizabeth Feiker. Racine: Whitman. $2 at Time Traveller, June, '87.

A war-time production, including an amazing melange. In it are TMCM, CP, and LM. The paper is cheap. "The Cunning Crow" introduces a little girl, surprised at finding her pitcher half-full of rocks!

1944 Children's Stories and How to Tell Them. By J. Berg Esenwein and Marietta Stockard. The Writer's Library. Springfield, MA: The Home Correspondence School. See 1917/19/44.

1944 Fables Choisies de La Fontaine. Bois gravés illustrant le texte. Premier volume (of two). Paper-covered. Editions des "Moulins d'Auvergne." Roanne: Sauzet. $10 at Bookhouse, Arlington, VA, Jan., '96.

A very nice pair of volumes from a time when people were not producing many fable books! These were a real find upstairs in the Bookhouse. There is one simple black-and-tan wood-engraving for each of the fifty-eight fables in this volume. They are numbered in the T of C at the back but not along the way. Some illustrations (e.g., 29) are signed "SOGNO," others with an "S" underlined, and still others in other ways. Among the best of the illustrations are those of the wolf and kid (100) and of the miser (104). Not in Bassy.

1944 Fables Choisies de la Fontaine. Bois gravées illustrant le texte. Premier Volume. Hardbound. Printed in Roanne. Editions des "Moulins d'Auvergne." $25 from Alibris, July, '99.

It is strange how a cover affects one's perception of a book.  I bought this beautifully covered pair of volumes thinking that the illustrations must be significant.  When I came to examine the books, I found the illustrations quite plain.  I was disappointed.  I picked four for special mention but did not think that even they were special:  "Le Lion et le Moucheron" (53); "Le Loup, la Chèvre et le Chevreau" (100); "Le Loup, la Mère et l'Enfant" (102); and GGE (121).  Then, as I went into the process of entering the book in the collection, I realized that I had found these volumes before--in an inexpensive version.  There I was surprised positively.  Here I was surprised negatively.  And at least one of my choices was consistent, since I had picked "Le Loup, la Chèvre et le Chevreau" (100) for commendation there too. Bois gravés illustrant le texte.

1944 Fables Choisies de La Fontaine. Bois gravés illustrant le texte. Deuxième volume (of two). Paper-covered. Editions des "Moulins d'Auvergne." Roanne: Sauzet. $10 at Bookhouse, Arlington, VA, Jan., '96.

A very nice pair of volumes from a time when people were not producing many fable books! These were a real find upstairs in the Bookhouse. There is one simple black-and-tan wood-engraving for each of the fifty-two fables in this volume. See my comments under the first volume. Among the best of the illustrations are those of the charlatan (30) and the curé (47). The fables in this volume seem to me preponderantly from the later books of La Fontaine; they include several lesser-known stories.

1944 Fables Choisies de la Fontaine. Bois gravés illustrant le texte. Deuxième volume (of two). Hardbound. Editions des "Moulins d'Auvergne." Roanne: Sauzet. $25 from Alibris, July, '99.

See my comments on the first volume, both paper and hardbound, and on the paperbound second volume. This time through my favorite illustrations were "Le Cerf se voyant dans l'Eau" (20); "La jeune Veuve" (32); and "Les Poissons et le Cormoran" (101).

1944 Famous Mouse Stories. Illustrations by Mary and Wallace Stover. ©1944 by John Sherman Bagg. A Mary Perks Book. #705. NY: Perks Publishing. $14.40 at Prince and Pauper, Aug., '93. Extra copy for $2 from Reston's Used Book Shop, Reston, Virginia, Jan., '96.

Apparently Perks Publishing is the successor to American Crayon's "Mary Perks" series; the latter name appears on the back cover, but not on the title page. One of three mouse stories included is LM. This mouse thought this mane was a haystack! This lion is more than usually credibly tied up. The version and art here are not those included in (More Than 30 of) American Childhood's Best Books (1942) or Best Nursery Tales (1943). Both copies include torn pages, and the extra copy has some pencil marks.

1944 Famous Rabbit Stories. Illustrations by Mary and Wallace Stover. ©1944 by John Sherman Bagg. A Mary Perks Book. #703. NY: Perks Publishing. $10 at Rose Bowl flea market, Aug., '93.

Apparently Perks Publishing is the successor to American Crayon's "Mary Perks" series; the latter name appears on the back cover, but not on the title page. One of four bunny stories included is TH. The telling pays attention to some often overlooked dynamics. Mr. Hare is careful to give judge Mr. Fox plenty of distance when the two deal with each other. Mr. Fox hopes that there will be a prize that he will hold. The binding has been restapled by someone. The version and art here are not those included in (More Than 30 of) American Childhood's Best Books (1942) or Ten Treasured Tales (1943).

1944 "Some Remarks on a Fable Collection," Offprint, The Princeton University Library Chronicle, Volume V, Number 4 (June, 1944), pp. 137-49. By Kenneth McKenzie. Friends of the Library. Gift, May, '98.

I here have in offprint form what I already had as the whole number of the magazine. I will repeat my comments from there. McKenzie started this collection of some six hundred books and pamphlets while he was a graduate student fifty years earlier. I sense a kindred spirit! After some less-than-conclusive analysis of definitions of fable and comments on allied genres, the article runs through the history of fable collections and editions, noting along the way some of the most important works that are in this collection. There are four full plates and four smaller figures from various early works. One illustration from Sadler's 1689 edition presents a fable I had not known before, in which a huntsman throws down mirrors to distract a pursuing tigress. I found it a pleasure to find, among references to materials that are new to me, a number of references to works I have or have dealt with, including McKenzie's own book of LaFontaine translations from forty-one years earlier.

1944 The Great Fables of All Nations. Selected by Manuel Komroff. Illustrated by Louise Thoron. NY: Dial Press: Tudor Publishing Co. See 1928/44.

1944 The Princeton University Library Chronicle. Volume V, Number 4 (June, 1944). Including "Some Remarks on a Fable Collection" (137-49) by Kenneth McKenzie. Published by the Friends of the Library. $5 by mail from The Owl at the Bridge, Cranston, August, ’96.

McKenzie started this collection of some six hundred books and pamphlets while he was a graduate student fifty years earlier. I sense a kindred spirit! After some less-than-conclusive analysis of definitions of fable and comments on allied genres, the article runs through the history of fable collections and editions, noting along the way some of the most important works that are in this collection. There are four full plates and four smaller figures from various early works. One illustration from Sadler’s 1689 edition presents a fable I had not known before, in which a huntsman throws down mirrors to distract a pursuing tigress. I found it a pleasure to find, among references to materials that are new to me, a number of references to works I have or have dealt with, including McKenzie’s own book of LaFontaine translations from forty-one years earlier.

1944 The Tall Book of Nursery Tales. Pictures by Feodor Rojankovsky. NY and Evanston: Harper & Row. $6.40 from Midway, Nov., '94. Extra copies for $3 from Renaissance, March, '88, and, in better shape, for $7.50 from Book House, St. Paul, July, '89.

This book may be notable mostly for its unusual shape and for the variation of colored and black-and-white illustrations, which are uninspired. Includes TMCM, MM, BW, FC, TH, LM, and GGE. The Midway edition may be the oldest, with Harper located in NY and London, no reference to Western Printing and Lithographing, and rougher paper. Its spine is bare. The two "Western" versions differ slightly in the arrangement of end papers. The Renaissance version is marked on the back as a "Harper Crest Library Edition." Because of their differences, I will keep all three in the collection.

1944 Trente-deux Fables de J. de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Les 4 Couleurs. Hardbound. #781 of 980 numbered copies. Éditions Musy Frères. $50 from McLean Art & Books, McLean, VA, Nov., '99.

This is a wonderful book! I feel lucky that it has fallen into my hands. Pierre Varenne in his preface speaks of the most French of the poets helping people "to forget the gloomy faces of today." Thirty-two artists of this group selected each a fable of La Fontaine, and almost all of them then created two images for the fable. The styles are varied and distinctive. Let me choose nine pairs of images from the thirty-two. I find these particularly good: "Les Voleurs et l'Ane" (5-6); "La Mort et le Boucheron" (7-8); "Les Membres et l'Estomac" (13-14); "Le Lion abattu par l'Homme" (17-18); FG (19-20); "La Vieille et les deux Servantes" (25-26); TB (35-36); MM (47-48); "Le Curé et le Mort" (49-50). This book is a treasure!

1944 Uncle Ben Jay's Wonder Book. The Book That Comes Alive. Retold by Baroness Christina de la Motte. Illustrations in color and in animation by Willy Pogany. NY: B.F. Jay & Co. $18 at Baltimore Antiquarian Fair, Aug., '91.

This curious book is made for viewing through alternate red and blue filters. The result is that the figures move. Now without the special glasses once accompanying the book, a person has to use 3-d glasses and wink! There are four fables among the twelve stories. MSA's exchanges of place are especially effective. The crier in BW has only two pet lambs to protect. LM and FC complete the fables.

1944 30 Chantefables pour les enfants sages. à chanter sur n'importe quel air. Robert Desnos. Illustrations de Olga Kowalewsky. Paris: Librairie Gründ. $30 from The Bookstall, San Francisco, April, '95.

The title here is unfortunately creative, at least for our sense of "fable." These are indeed rounds to be sung to and with little children. They are all about animals, one to a page, and they are very pleasingly illustrated with color lithography. The page devoted to kangaroo and zebra is torn. Perhaps the most fascinating question about this book concerns how we are to picture a French publishing firm with a German name in 1944.

1944 XX Fables de Jean de la Fontaine. Illustrées par Samivel. Lyon: A l'Imprimerie Artistique en Couleurs. $20 by mail from Cynthia Fowler, Oct., '90.

A nicely executed book in very good condition. Sixteen two-color illustrations adorn the fables, including a country rat and a city rat (while TMCM is not included among the fables!) around the title. The best of the illustrations: TB (23) and FK (27). The beautiful end-papers include a number of fables.

1944/47/48 Favorite Stories. No artist or editor acknowledged. Racine: Whitman Publishing Company. $7.95 at Downtown Books II, June, '93.

Though some stories here overlap in telling and illustration with those in Whitman's Favorite Stories (1947), illustrated by Francis Kirn, neither of the two Aesop's fables here overlaps. "The Man Who Tried to Please" (40) is well told, with good variations and repetitions. TMCM (58) is differently told in several ways. The country mouse took food dropped by the cook and gathered it in the attic. The city mouse objected because these crumbs were "dried-out leftovers." In the city, he urged the country mouse from the beginning to grab food and to bring it into his hole. The maid first interrupted their eating. When they emerged from the hole, the cat attacked, and both scampered back to the hole. When the cat finally left off guarding the hole, the country mouse went home "and lived happily ever after." One or two simple designs for each fable.

1944/47/48 Nursery Book: 2 Books of Old Favorite Stories. Stories retold by Frances Cavanah and Elizabeth Feiker. Large format, paper-covered. Printed in USA. Racine: Whitman. $10.00 from Antique Interiors, Bismarck, ND, June, '98.

This double-book with paper covers seems to consist first of the earlier Bed-Time Nursery Book (1944) with its three fables (TMCM on 30, CP on 91, and LM on 127). The CP version is still "The Cunning Crow" with a little girl surprised at finding her pitcher half-full of rocks. The second portion includes a BC illustration unusual for having the cat looking at the bell sitting outside the mice hole (35)! Also here are TH (36), FC (46), BW (53), "The Wolf and the Kid" (dancing before death, 70), "Why the Bear Has a Stubby Tail" (90), FS with a fox that "flew into a rage" (116), and GA (118). Each story has at least one illustration; some illustrations add a color.

1944/59 Aesopische Fabeln. Zusammengestellt und ins Deutsche übertragen von August Hausrath. Third edition. Paperbound. Munich: Tusculum Buch: Ernst Heimeran Verlag. DM 28 from Kunstantiquariat Joachim Lührs, Hamburg, July, '98. Extra copy from an unknown source at an unknown time for an unknown price. 

Urtext und Übertragung. This paperback book is especially valuable because Hausrath himself did one of the standard texts of Aesop in the original. His translations have to be helpful. This book is bilingual on facing pages. Sometimes Latin substitutes for the Greek, as in #15, #20 and #49-52, all from Phaedrus. The Greek title generally gives the characters (e.g., "Eagle and Rabbit"), while the German gives the point (e.g., "Die Rache des Schwachen"). There are ninety-one fables here. They are grouped as follows: (I) Mythen und Märchen (#1-15); (II) Tierfabeln (#16-52); (III) Tier und Mensch (#53-73); (IV) Menschenfabeln: Götter und Menschen (#74-83); and (V) Menschenfabeln: Menschen unter sich (#84-91). One has to take one's hat off to the Germans: here is a paperback pocketbook offering Greek texts! I wonder how many copies of the 1944 original are in existence.

1944/85? The Tall Book of Nursery Tales. Pictures by Feodor Rojankovsky. NY and Evanston: Harper & Row. A half-price bargain for $4.50 at the Wisconsin State Fair, Aug., '85.

This reprint (which does not admit that it is such) has a different cover and is somewhat sloppily assembled.

1944? Fables from Aesop and Others. Illustrated by Arnrid Johnston. Transatlantic Arts. $30 from Yoffees, March, '95.

A beautiful book that I had read about in Ash and Higton's Aesop's Fables: A Classic Illustrated Edition (1990) but had had little hope of finding. They give the 1944 date, which I cannot find in the book itself. The strong black-and-white title page of a court scene is followed by twenty-three fables. The texts are generally well thought out, except that the bear on 14 only pretends to dislike the smell in the lion's den. The version here seems to sympathize with the grasshopper against the ant (23). New to me is "The Eagle, the Jackdaw, and the Magpie" (27). Where does "The Bear and the Fowls" (45) on mocking others' customs come from? For each fable there is a full-page colored illustration done in something that looks like pastels. Among the best illustrations are those of the leopard and the fox (28, used in Ash and Higton) and the monkey and dolphin (36). There are many little black-and-white designs as well. That of the monkey and dolphin is particularly well integrated with the colored illustration. Johnston dresses up the animals well. "Jupiter and the Animals" spans two pages (20-21) with both text and illustration at the center of the book and reverses the rhythm of placement of text and illustration. The last story puts both text and illustration onto one page. Now, after a detailed analysis in '97, I can offer the following additional comments: Johnston is relying very heavily on Dodsley and LaFontaine. "The Lion, the Bear, the Monkey, and the Fox" is from Dodsley (where the bear also pretends) as is "The Bear and the Fowls" asked about above. "Jupiter and the Animals" here presents half of what is in LaFontaine's fable—the half that is never used elsewhere. Similarly, "The Lioness and the Bear" (41) and "The Rat Who Retired from the World" (43) are only in LaFontaine, while "The Cats Who Went to Law" (6) and "The Fox and the Crow" (12) seem heavily dependent on him. The collection's twenty-three fables thus present an unusual selection.

1945 a proverb for it: 1510 Greek Sayings. Compiled and edited by B. J. Marketos; Translated by Ann Arpajoglou. Drawings by John Vassos. Hardbound. Dust jacket. NY: New World Publishers. $7 from Blue Whale Books, Charlottesville, VA, July, '95.

Does this book really belong in this collection? I am not sure. But I was so happy to find a book in Charlottesville. No doubt there is plenty in this book that comes from Aesop, even though authors are not mentioned here. Aesop is mentioned in #1099 on 130: "He hasn't even touched Aesop's fables." I wonder what that proverb means! Fables are also referred to in #1056 on 126: "They told an ass a fable and he shook his ears." Once again, I do not see the meaning! My favorite as I glance through the book is #1066 on 127: "He broke a leg, and he's asking other people if it hurts." Another favorite is #401 on 63: "The man who had much and the one who had little lamented; but the one who had nothing began to sing."

1945 Aesop's Animal Fables. Combined with a game, "Bring Back the Animals." Verses by Kirby Muir. Pictures by Ralph Ray. Drawings for the game by James Ryan. Spiral bound. NY: Broadland, Inc. $28 from Barbara and Bill Yoffee, March, '94. Extra copies, one with a slight crimp along its edge and scratching on its back for $25 from Greg Williams, Dec., '96, and another with a crease in its back for $10 from Carolina Bookstore, Charlotte, June, '97.

I think the combination of a book and a game is a first in this collection. The game, with a punch-out spinning arrow and markers, actually has nothing to do with Aesop or fables. The most amazing thing about this simple game is that it is in such good condition fifty years later; perhaps the condition testifies to the game's inherent lack of interest! The cover page of the book proclaims proudly "All the pictures and verses in this book are suitable for framing to be hung in school room, library or personal den." Eleven fables on two pages each, with a page of bad verse and a facing page of illustration. Alternating two-tone (brown-and-tan) and multi-colored presentations. LM (12) has a mouse that runs across the lion's nose in the lion's lair! The donkey and lapdog belong to a peddler (10). "The Stag and the Lion" (24) is new to me: the hunted stag goes into the lion's cave, in the version's own cliche, "out of the frying pan into the fire."

1945 De Krekel en de Mier en Andere Fabels van Jean La Fontaine. Geillustreerd Door/Twaalf Etsen van Jeanne Vieruma Oosting. Met Teksten van J.W.F. Werumeus Buning. #774 of 1000, signed by both publisher and artist. Hardbound. Amsterdam: A.J.G. Strengholt's Uitgeversmaatschappij N.V. $100 from Kedem - Eran Reiss Rare Books - Art and Culture Books, Nir Mose, Israel through eBay, Dec., '07.

Here are twelve of La Fontaine's French text fables with an etching and Dutch comments for each. Each fable follows a four-page rhythm: title, illustration, French text, and Dutch comments. Perhaps the best among the illustrations are WL (25) and "The Eagle and the Owl" (40). Other fables presented here are GA, FC, OF, TMCM, FS, LM, FG, TH, "The Two Cocks," and "The Monkey and the Cat." Editions of a few fables find their way back to the same fables.

1945 Den Lille Aesop: 59 af de gamle Dyrefabler. Fortalt paa Dansk af R. Broby-Johansen. Med Billeder af Mogens Zieler. Paperbound. Copenhagen: Gyldendal. $75 from Johanson Rare Books, Baltimore, MD, May, '08.

How nice to find, nine years later, the original of which my two English versions, hardbound and paperback, were the later translation. They are listed under 1961. This 1945 Danish original version even contains the little booklet giving the titles of the fifty-nine fables. Most of the book's pages are uncut. Let me repeat some of my comments on the hardbound 1961 English edition. This book has become a favorite of mine. A note before the fables traces the fascinating history of this collection. Some of the fables first appeared in a private edition by Hjorth's Printing-House in 1943 for distribution as Christmas presents. In 1944, all the fables were printed by the same firm for Gyldendal and its title was made into "The Little Aesop," thought to be a less provocative title during the occupation by Nazi forces. The book did not appear, however, until after the liberation in 1945, though a number of copies had been distributed privately with a duplicate T of C that emphasized the topical application of the fables. Thus OF (#1) was titled "Great Germany" and "The Lion, the Ass, and the Fox" (#59) was titled "The Fate of the Informer." The fifty-nine fables are told with wit and care. The artwork, which usually adds one color to black, is delightful. OF (#1) has a frog who thinks that if only his skin was not wrinkled, he would be as big as the ox. There are no children involved in this telling. BW (#14) involves a repeated cry that wolves are coming and a fact that plural wolves do come. Fable #15 on the war of the birds and beasts gives a good example of the book's excellent silhouette art. In the following fable, the whole dead ass is piled onto the back of the unhelpful horse. LS (#29) has a wonderful illustration of a bloody stag divided into four equal parts! The following fable's illustration shows graphically with its separated human limbs what would happen to the man if a lion created the sculpture! Zieler does a creative job of making faces out of the rivers and the sea for #40. In fable #51 the mule kicks the wolf in the forehead while the latter is trying to read what kind of horse his father was; this version explicitly speaks of this "racial problem," and it may take this unusual turn precisely to address the racial interests of the Nazis. This version has the horse as usual take on a human master, but he does not even overcome his enemy the stag. In #57 the ass asks as usual whether the enemies will burden him more than his present masters; the unusual part here is that the cargo is human. The ass thus asks if he will have two saddles put upon him. The black-and-white illustration catches this humorous twist well. There are no titles except those given in the laid-in broschure. That is also the only T of C.

1945 Fables and Satires. By Harold Morland. Drawings by Helen Kapp. First edition? Dust jacket. London: George Routledge & Sons. $20 from the Yoffees, April, '92.

Forty-one literary pieces. It can be hard to know where one genre leaves off and the other begins, for example in "The Lament of the Carrion Crows" (26). Morland's world seems dark. The book speaks frankly of wartime experience. The best pieces include "The Lion and the Chameleon" (8), "The White Elephant" (9), "The Sensitive Skunk" (32), "Tools" (39), "Sweet, Take Care!" (54), and "Near is my Shirt, But Nearer is my Skin" (74). Kapp's work seems best to me when she works with human subjects.

1945 Fables de la Fontaine. Illustrées par Marcel Vidoudez. Softbound. Printed in Switzerland. Lausanne: Editions Novos S.A. $14 from Alibris, June, '99.

This is a large softbound volume, 9½" x 10½", with a title-page, 20 pages of fables, and a T of C at the back. Nineteen fables are presented. The illustrations, some in black-and-white and some in color, are simple and appropriate. The book is in good condition. Among the best illustrations is the two-page spread for "Le Coche et la Mouche" near the center of the book.

1945 Fables for Flyers: Number One: The Sad Tale of George W. Noble and Mugger Murch. U.S. Government Printing Office: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy. $7.51 from Gaye Dean, Dover, NH through Ebay, April, '00.

This pamphlet, 7¼" x 5", presents the contrasting stories of the two Navy flyers mentioned in the subtitle. George W. Noble did everything right in life, and was well beloved. Mugger Murch was hated by everyone. On one small point, their studied contrast flips. Mugger remembers to turn on his IFF and use the numbers of the day, while beloved George forgets to turn on his IFF and to enter the numbers of the day. Poor George is now dead because we shot him down! Navaer 00-80L=1. Believe it or not, this publication is marked "restricted"!

1945 Fables for Flyers: Number Two: The Remarkable Tale of Sack-Time Charlie. Paperbound. U.S. Government Printing Office: Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy. $19.27 from Nancy Waycott, Banning, CA, through Ebay, May, '08.

This pamphlet, 7¼" x 5", is second in a series. The first, from the same year, presented "The Sad Tale of George W. Noble and Mugger Murch." This number presents the story of Sack-Time Charlie. Charlie as a civilian had ballooned through getting no exercise, eating too much, and drinking coffee, soft drinks, and worse. Basic training and flying school shaped him up, and he became an ace. But he did not attend to exercise and to learning how to swim. Though he "downed many Japs," he began to balloon again, got downed by a zero, was beaten to the raft by the now-downed "Jap" who had downed him, and was lucky to be saved. Charlie really learns his lesson when he draws the assignment of accompanying the captain on shore leave but cannot row the boat when the motor conks out. The captain, who has had to do the rowing, soon assigns Charlie training, various exercises, and swimming lessons. This time, it all takes, and Charlie shows that he really is a "smart cookie." Navaer 00-80L-2. Believe it or not, this publication, like the first number, is marked "restricted"! If there is some top-secret information here, I certainly missed it!

1945 The Animal Story Book. Edited by Ernest Thompson-Seton. "Young Folks' Library," Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Editor-in-chief. ©1938 by Charles E. Knapp. Chicago: Auxiliary Educational League. See 1902/38/45.

1945 The Barnyard News. By H.L. Winborne. Illustrated by Priscilla Montgomery. Hardbound. Cambridge, MA: Robert Welch Publishing Company. $6.50 from Jon Hoyt, Quechee, VT, through eBay, May, '00.

This oversized book (14" x 11") uses the format of a four-page monthly newspaper to present Mother Goose stories and Aesopic fables in paraphrase as news stories. (November alone seems to merit only two pages.) Thus in February we find on the front page "Mouse Family Holds Conference" by Uncle "Aesop" Slocum. The article is accompanied by a picture "What To Do About Cats?" and mentions that eleven different ideas were suggested at the conference. Nearby is an advertisement for "Peter Puppy Cat-Belling Service." A month later we learn that Caw Caw Crow was greatly disappointed. He came home from college, where he had learned to think for himself. One of his conclusions was that, if he would stay in the pond as Guinevere Goose has, he could develop white feathers. Caw Caw's father later teaches him a new trick when he returns for spring vacation. The younger crow could find only a half-filled milk bottle to quench his thirst. Horny Bull almost crushes Freddy Frog, and apparently Mrs. Frog stops before she bursts. The fable articles seem to be marked by having Uncle "Aesop" Slocum as their author. There is about one fable per monthly newspaper. My, the things that have been done with Aesop's fables!

1945 The Home University Bookshelf. Volume III: Folk-Lore, Fables, and Fairy Tales. Editorial board of the University Society. NY: University Society. $14.95 from Cliff's Books, Pasadena, Aug., '93.

See the nearly identical edition of 1927. Here the cover has a picture, but the endpapers have lost most of their colors. The fables of Aesop are on 364-88. Some curious tellings: the monkey seizes the cat's paws and makes her grab hot nuts, and the moral of FG is "Disappointment may be lightened by philosophy, even if the latter is wrong." A curious melange of illustrations: four good colored illustrations (particularly good in this edition) to a page by Bess Bruce Cleveland in addition to the black-and-whites (which look copied) on the text-pages themselves. Aesop is followed by fables of India, Gay, La Fontaine, and others. Also check 257-74: this "Japanese and Other Oriental Tales" section includes "The Story of Zirac" and other fable material.

1945 60 Favolelli: Libera Trascrizione da Ivan Krylov. Maria Tibaldi Chiesa. Illustrazioni di Vsevolode Nicouline. Dust jacket. Milan: Italgeo. $6 at Beckham's, New Orleans, Dec., '92.

The major find--and major bargain--in this trip to New Orleans! An Italian Krylov in good condition. And what must Milan have been like in 1945? This is my first book out of some 1330 that is dated 1945. Do not miss the lovely embossed cover. Four good colored illustrations: an elephant in a boat (#12), the quartet (particularly good, #27), flowers (#37), and the lion and the wolf (#48). Lots of good black-and-white work, starting with the delightful cartoons in the long introduction, which seems to be a disquisition on the history of the fable. Other good black-and-white work: of hens (#11), teacher and cub (#18), and dogs' friendship (both illustrations, #39). The last paragraphs of many are printed as inverse pyramids. My, what you can find if you scratch around!

1945? Aesop's Fables for Young People. Illustrated by R.F. White. No editor acknowledged. Foulsham's Boy and Girl Fiction Library. Dust jacket. London: W. Foulsham & Co., Ltd. $16 from Barbara and Bill Yoffee, March,'94.

About 240 fables are arranged in alphabetical order, each with an italicized moral at the end. Thus we go from "Aesop Plays" to "Young Mole and Her Mother." There are about twelve black-and-white illustrations of an inferior cast. Note both the strange facial expression on the lion on 78 and the strange extension of his arm straight off to his right. The versions, checked in a random sample, seem to expand on the fables tastefully with helpful explanation and motivation material. Running into an edition like this one reminds me that there are fields of unseen presentations of fables over the horizon.

1945? Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Pierre Paquet. Editions du Cep. 100 Francs at Chanut, Paris, May, '97.

This 24-page pamphlet contains ten fables arranged in an unusual rhythm that alternates two pages of cartoons with two pages of text. The cartoon pages, which show excellent sense of color and form, contain important phrases from the fables under and around their images. Among the best scenes are the frog stretcher-bearers for OF on 6, the various scenes between the banker and the shoemaker on 12-13, and the rat's scissors for LM on 22. A delightful and well preserved little book.. Paquet's cover-illustration appears to be signed in 1945.

1945? Old Time Favorites to Paint and Crayon. Inside title: Fun and Play with Paints and Crayons. Fable verses by Jane Corby. Fable illustrations by P.H. Webb. Racine: Whitman Publishing Company. $12 in Baltimore, Aug., '91.

Large-format "see and color" book with lively comic-book style illustrations and poor verse. Some little friend began the coloring! The traditional children's stories include four fables. The lawyer eating an oyster has become a pig refereeing between a cat and a dog. The footprints going into the "sick" lion's den become empty clothes left before a tiger. In "Bear Advice," the lie-down traveller is too fat to climb the tree! Also AL.

1945? The Book of Fables. Illustrated by Rufus Morris. Softbound. Sydney: Dawfox Productions. $7 from Glenda Petrie, Angaston, Australia, through eBay, July, '03. 

Here is a simple, landscape-formatted, canvas-spined book about 9¼" x 8¼" with nearly identical front and back covers. The pattern is the same for fourteen of the fifteen fables presented. Texts with a monochrome splash of color behind them stand on the left facing a full-page black design against a single different color on the right. The exception is at the centerfold, which combines text and illustration on both pages and uses background color for both. All of the book's illustrations are signed "Rufus Morris." The last adds "41." In TH, the distance is five miles and the stakes are five pounds. In "The Tortoise and the Eagle," the eagle realizes in mid-air that he has been lied to about the reward of jewels and he exacts his revenge by sticking his talons into the soft parts of the tortoise's body. I find this version strange. Story and image for "The Fox and the Wolf" do not match: the story is about a cave, and the picture is about a well! There is of course also a well-known fable that involves a well. I think that the translator literally got onto a different page from the illustrator! In FK, the frogs ask for a king who would "make them live a little honester." The most dramatic of the illustrations depicts desperation in "The Old Man and Death."

1946 A Child's Bouquet of Yesterday. By Gerda Vautier. Hardbound. NY: American Studio Books. $6 from Book Ark, NY, April, '97. Extra copy without dust jacket, apparently older, for $10.

This is a lovely, gentle, little book. It has a section on fables on 9-13, but in truth two of its five selections there are not fables. There are good tellings and depictions (two perhaps from old chapbooks and one from Bewick) of "The Stag and the Vine," "The Crane and the Geese," and "The Sheep and the Bramble." The latter is new to me. A sheep wandered into a thicket to find shelter from a storm. When he wanted to leave, a bramble had such a hold on his fleece that he had to give it up to get free. Sure enough, it is on 229 of Select Fables (1820/1975). It is quoted here verbatim from Bewick. Since the two copies may come from different vintages--though they are both marked "1946"--I will keep both in the collection.

1946 Children's Books of Yesterday. A Catalogue of an Exhibition held at 7 Albemarle Street, London, during May 1946. Compiled by Percy H. Muir With a Foreword by John Masefield. London: published for the National Book League by the Cambridge University Press. $4 at Jackson Street, Omaha, Nov., '92.

Small-format list of 1000 titles, of which fable books account for twenty-four. F.R. Bussell's collection of books is enhanced by some taken from Muir and others. The fable items include first of all a section on 91-3: #443-53. Notice the second-to-last: Jefferys Taylor's Aesop in Rhyme, the only one of these fable books that I have. Note also the Meggendorfer contribution under #453. Also on fables: #50, 85, 463, 481, 735, 793-4, 947-8, and 955.

1946 Fabeln. Ausgewählt und illustriert von Hanna Forster. First edition. Hardbound. Stuttgart: Dr. Hans Bolten Verlag. DEM 8 from Buchhandlung Hatry, Heidelberg, July, '01.

This 112-page book has a list of fabulists and a list of illustrations on its last page. The choice of representatives in this anthology puts stress on ancients, La Fontaine, Bidpai, and Germans. All the selections here are in prose. The style of illustration that Forster employs is simple. There is a short essay at the end: "Allgemeines zu Fabel." The print in this essay is so small that it tests one's eyes! There are very good fables among this collection, starting with the very first, Lessing's "Der alte Löwe" (5). I miss, however, some organization, whether by subject or era or author. Other worthy fables I have noticed here in the first third include Pfeffel's "Das Glühwürmchen und die Kröte" (6); Meissner's "Der schwörende Wolf" (27); Langbein's "Der Igel und der Hase" (32); and Gleim's "Der Löwe und der Fuchs" (36)." This book prints the US military government's permission to publish. Actually, it is a surprise to see a fable book published in Germany in 1946!

1946 Fabels van La Fontaine. Jan Prins. Engravings of Grandville. Utrecht/Antwerp: Prisma paperback: Spectrum. See 1940/46.

1946 Fabels van La Fontaine. Jan Prins. Engravings of Grandville. Utrecht/Antwerp: Prisma paperback: Spectrum. See 1940/46/76.

1946 Fables de La Fontaine. Tome 1. Aquarelles de Nathalie Parain. #2221 of 3500. Paris: La Bonne Compagnie. $10 from Magers & Quinn, Dec., '95.

A beautiful find. I am surprised to see the French publishing industry able to do a book like this so soon after the war. The aquarelles are unfortunately almost completely devoid of narrative content; they end up often no more than pleasing pictures, I fear. Thus the best of them are those that move into some human content, especially the cover picture of MSA, the frontispiece of La Fontaine under a tree listening to a crow, the drunk slumped over a picnic bench (98), and the peasant with a frozen snake (192). I am cataloguing these two volumes some months after finding them, and I can locate no record of having bought them, but there are Magers & Quinn cards inside the books. In any case, finding books like these by chance keeps me going in my searches!

1946 Fables de La Fontaine. Tome 2. Aquarelles de Nathalie Parain. Paris: La Bonne Compagnie. $10 from Magers & Quinn, Dec., '95.

Again, a beautiful find. See my notes on the first volume. My favorite aquarelles here include the bed of the man who finds a louse significant matter to pray over (60), the road over the hill as an image for "The Two Doves" (105), the two goats on a bridge (207), and the Scythian overpruning his tree (239). The colophon in the first volume notes that only first volumes are numbered, but the numbering is meant to apply as well to the second volume. This volume has small red marks next to some entries in the T of C.

1946 Fables de Mon Jardin. Georges Duhamel. Paperbound. Paris: Mercure de France. 50 Francs from Chanut, Paris, May, '97.

First published in 1936. There are eighty fables here on 229 pages, followed by a T of C. I tried about four or five of the fables. They really are about the garden, and they are fables. They tend to be highly reflective, I think. They do not seem to work particularly off of traditional models. Duhamel was known for his atheism and compassion. It is frustrating for me to be close to good literature like this and not be able to track it well linguistically.

1946 Fables de Pestalozzi. Choisies et mises en Français par Jean Moser. Paperbound. Fribourg, Switzerland: Un pour Tous: Egloff. 30 Swiss francs from Altstadt Antiquariat, Fribourg, Switzerland, Oct., '99.

Here is a selection of the 279 fables that Pestalozzi wrote in German, roughly in the period from 1780 to 1790. There is a T of C at the back. The book is very well preserved for having been published sixty years ago; in fact, many of its pages are still uncut. I have sampled Pestalozzi's fables here and on the web. They are not meant for children. They seem rather to give his basic anthropological view. I enjoy, for example, "La montagne et la plaine" (22), in which the mountain says "I am higher than you." The plain responds. "That may be, but I am the whole, and you are just an exception." A charioteer passes over a frozen lake and claims that there is no better route in the whole world. The lake answers "When I cease to be held by ice, I am a lot better. Your praise is based on my death. I would prefer to live and be less useful to chariots" (81). I think there could be a lot of fun and insight among these fables, even though what I have read underscores that they are uneven in quality.

1946 Fables of Aesop. Handwritten by Philip Grushkin. Boxed. NY: The Scribe: Archway Press. Gift of Elizabeth Dulany, Sept., '92. Second copy containing the blurb for the series for $25 from Black Oak, Dec., '96. Extra copy with some skid marks and an inky fingerprint for $5 from Cartesian Bookstore, Berkeley, Aug., '94.

Eighteen nicely told, hand-printed fables, with one or two small illustrations in two colors for each fable. There is a nice story running along with the text, as illustrations follow two men conversing from the title page to the following page to the first story to the page after the last story. A lovely gift of thanks for making some Aesopic material available to her.

1946 Flower Fables. Zillah Whited. Dust jacket. NY: Flower Books, Inc. $4.80 at Dan Behnke, Chicago, March, '93.

This sideways book may be the most saccharine thing I have. Fairies are all over making little flowers so that boys and girls can be good. Yecch! One "of a series of authentic flower books." What is an inauthentic flower book? "Modern parents know that this entertaining approach to educational information for children is highly effective." So says the flyleaf. Some of the most see-through-able propaganda I have seen, even if it is in a good cause.

1946 Have You Read. By Marjorie Pratt and Mary Meighen. Illustrated by Carol Critchfield. Chicago: Benj. H. Sanborn & Co. $3.50 at Amitin, St. Louis, March, '95.

A kids' reader for the second and third grades. The same authors and illustrator had already done Read Another Story as primer (in the same series?) in 1939 with the same publisher. Four fables appear: "The Fox and the Crab" (1), "The Fox and the Rooster" (41, the Chanticleer story, but here the fox has a paw on the rooster, who uses a gentlemen's hand-washing as his ploy to escape), "The Alligator and the Jackal" (119), and "The Tiger and the Man" (177). Colored and monochrome illustrations alternate. A uniform frame serves as the title-page for all the stories. There is a T of C at the front.

1946 Heritage of World Literature. In series Literature: A Series of Anthologies. E.A. Cross and Neal M. Cross. Illustrated by George M. Richards. NY: Macmillan. $1 at Schroeder, April, '88.

Two fables of Aesop in William E. Leonard's verse versions show up on 75 in the midst of this textbook of mostly western literature. A little sample of Aesop's small but standard place in literature.

1946 How the Rabbit Fooled the Whale and the Elephant; The Man Who Kept House; Why the Bear Has a Short Tail (Cover: How the Rabbit Fooled the Whale and the Elephant and Other Stories). Selected by Louise B. Williams. Illustrated by Sari. Hardbound. Litho in USA. NY: Wonder Books #508: Wonder Books. $2 from an unknown source, perhaps in Fall, '99.

Here is a new and curious experience. This book is the predecessor of another that I have already catalogued. That book's title begins "Why the Bear Has a Short Tail" and it is listed in 1946. Now I have found this version which retains the same number, but many things have changed. They include the name of the series, which has changed from "Wonder Books--with the Washable Covers" to just "Wonder Books." This earlier book is larger--about 7½" x 9¾" rather than about 6½" x 8"--and each of the illustrations is proportionally larger. This earlier book also has a different order of stories, and the title of the book is accordingly different. It uses a different color (salmon) and design for the cover. Here a hare reads a page about an elephant, whereas the smaller book pictures three bears against a yellow background. One of those bears reaches back to his short tail. As my comments there point out, one of the three stories is after the pattern of the wolf fishing. The title story has the clever rabbit pitting the whale and elephant against each other without their knowing it. Ludwig Bemelmans originally wrote this rabbit-story under the title "Rosebud" in 1942.

1946 Jean de la Fontaine: Fables. Volume I. Illustrations de Perot. #2365 of 2750, one of a boxed set of three. Paper covers. Printed in France. Paris, Niort: Éditions Nicolas. $11.67 from Loganberry Books, Cleveland, May, '00.

This small paperbound volume is 4" x 5½". This first volume has an exquisite engraving of FS on its cover in the style of the early woodcuts. There are forty-seven fables here, followed by a T of C. There are also some thirteen little red-and-black designs after various fables. My favorite here is for "Le Coq et le Renard" (51). Alas, the spine of this little book is on its way to becoming separated from the pages.

1946 Jean de la Fontaine: Fables. Volume II. Illustrations de Perot. Paper covers. Paris, Niort: Éditions Nicolas. $11.67 from Loganberry Books, Cleveland, May, '00.

This small paperbound volume is 4" x 5½". This second volume has an exquisite engraving on its cover of two cocks in a barnyard. There are forty-five fables here, followed by a T of C. There are also frequent little red-and-black designs after the fables. My favorites here are for 2P (32) and "Le petit Poisson et le Pecheur" (34). One of a boxed set of three.

1946 Jean de la Fontaine: Fables. Volume III. Illustrations de Perot. Paper covers. Paris, Niort: Éditions Nicolas. $11.67 from Loganberry Books, Cleveland, May, '00.

This small paperbound volume is 4" x 5½". This third volume has an exquisite engraving on its cover of bees, wolf (?), and hedgehog. There are thirty-eight fables here, followed by a T of C. There are also frequent little red-and-black designs after the fables; many of them are repeated. My favorites here are for "Le Singe et le Chat" (50) and TT (58). One of a boxed set of three.

1946 La Fontaine: Fables. Édition Complete. Introduction par Denis Saurat. Distribué exclusivement par Hachette, Londres. Londres: The Commodore Press Ltd. $2.85 in Oxford, July, '92.

This is an unusual LaFontaine for me in that it was done in French language on English soil. The year of publication offers some background for this anomaly. Saurat offers a good little introduction replete with well chosen phrases. For him LaFontaine is the best of French authors; he covers the field of emotions.

1946 La Fontaine: Fables Choisies. La Fontaine. Ornements de Ray Bret Koch. #370 of 500. Boxed. Unbound folios. Collection Poétique sous la Direction de Hervé Baille. Printed in Paris. Paris: Les Éditions de la Nouvelle France. £ 9.99 from Mike Kerr, Newport, Gwent, Great Britain, through Ebay, Sept., '01.

This book got me in touch with Mike, who works as a volunteer selling old books for charity. Sometimes he notices books that could draw more and puts them on Ebay. I got lucky! There are forty-seven of La Fontaine's fables in this boxed set of folios. Many have simple and very attractive designs just above their titles. Among the prettiest are the silhouette for "Le Coche et la Mouche" (35). I also like the illustration for "L'Éléphant et le Singe de Jupiter" (49), which puts the elephant and his rhinoceros opponent both on circus performing drums. Of course, the elephant learns in this fable that he is not in the spotlight of the world's most important events! The amorous lion (61) wears a blindfold and is ridden by Cupid. The illustration for FG frames itself beautifully (109). Each page is framed in a maroon stripe, with "Fables" above left-hand pages and "La Fontaine" above right-hand pages. Unusually, the AI, tirage data, and colophon seem to be at the front of this set of folios. Might this folio have been misplaced from the back? I have found recently a number of outstanding French fable publications from just after the war. Were publishing houses eager to reestablish themselves and French literature? To set a high standard of artistic quality? To give artists a chance at last?

1946 La Fontaine: Fables, Tome I. La Fontaine. Illustrées par Moritz Kennel. Hardbound. Zurich: No. 42: Libraire-Editeur Papyria Soc. An. $20.5 from Browsery Books, East Aurora, NY, through eBay, April, '08.

I had to buy three books to get this one volume, new to me. Now I learn that it sets me on the search for a further volume! This is a typical large-format French post-WWII edition containing ten fables. It has a canvas binding. The illustrations are lively and engaging, from the beginning illustration of OF, which includes three frogs and two caterpillars. FC features a crow dressed in tails, with a dressed son (?) in an elaborate birdhouse on the same tree. TB has a squirrel, a rabbit, and a deer for engaged onlookers--and two very detailed human beings. TT has a turtle somehow crowned and many beasts watching from the ground; this illustration is also presented on the book's cover. WL has the moment of the violent carrying off of the defenseless lamb; I do not believe I have ever seen this moment pictured before. There is an advertisement for the second volume on the last page.

1946 La Fontaine: Fables, Tome II. Illustrees par Moritz Kennel. Hardbound. Zurich: No. 43: Libraire-Editeur Papyria Soc. An. $28.50 from Jacaranda, Bridgewater, VT, through eBay, Oct., '08.

Here is a major triumph and a major stroke of luck. Earlier this year, I catalogued Volume I of this two-volume edition and mentioned that it set me on a search for the other volume. How lucky I am to have found it on eBay! Like the first volume, it is a typical large-format French post-WWII edition containing ten fables. The text for each is on the left-hand page, with a full-page illustration on the right. The book, like its partner, has a canvas binding. The illustrations are lively and engaging, from the beginning illustration of the old cat and the young mouse. Other particularly fine illustrations include "Le Renard et le Bouc" (also on the cover); FS; "Le Cochet, le Chat et le Souriceau"; FM; and "Le Singe et le Dauphin." There is an advertisement for the first volume on the last page.

1946 La Fontaine: Les Fables et les Bêtes. Illustrées par Mirabelle. Pictorial boards and hard-paper binding. Printed in France. Tours: Maison Mame. £20 from Unicorn Books, Middlesex, March, '98.

A standard selection of eighteen La Fontaine fables with a full page of color for each fable. The color work on the title-page illustration of the fox in the grass is outstanding! Other good work is 39 ("Le Coche et la Mouche") and 43 ("Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin"), but the rest of the colored work lacks the definition of the title-page's illustration. I am surprised that they were publishing books like this early in 1946, so soon after the war. T of C at the back. Colored boards. For the French, there will always be new La Fontaine books!

1946 Les Fables de Florian. Compositions d'André Hellé. Canvas-bound. Printed in Nancy. Nancy: Berger-Levrault. 385 Francs from Nicolas Rémon, Livres anciens, Vernaison, St. Ouen, Clignancourt, July, '01.

I had not been aware that this favorite artist of mine had done a Florian book. It is breathtakingly lovely! Twenty-six fables, listed in a T of C at the back of this oversize book of 64 pages, richly illustrated. I find here "The Blind and the Lame" (14); does it originate with Dodsley in 1761, perhaps one generation before Florian? Among the best of the illustrations are those spilling across the two-page spread for "Le Troupeau de Colas" (18-19). Another is "Le Danseur de Corde et le Balancier" (29). The frequently low but broad illustrations--perhaps an inch and a half high but all the way across the page--work very nicely to show the developments in "L'Inondation" (34). Some of Hellé's best work is out in nature. There are good examples of these open-air studies on 39 and 59. A very nice book!

1946 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Dessins Animés de G. Lebret. Paris: Dargaud S.A. Éditeur. $65 at Books of Wonder, NY, April, '97.

One of the most playful books I have seen in a while. Sections of La Fontaine's text are numbered to correspond to cartoon pictures. There is lots of wit here. A steam kettle boiling in one picture (DW) is smelled in the next! Imagination stamps these illustrations. The lion has torn half his skin off in pursuing the mosquito; the dove carries off the fowler's pot, in which the fowler's imagination was already cooking him; the miller's son picks his nose. "The Cat and the Old Rat" is one of the best here, including the cat's attempt to disguise himself in a bag. "Les Animals Malade de la Peste" is a magnificent two-page sweep. The last story is also excellent: "Le Savetier et le Financier." Twenty-three fables. T of C at the back. The cover is bent at the upper left: my fault for poor packing as I travelled from Santa Clara to Omaha! The spine is also quite weak.

1946 Les Fables de La Fontaine. Dessins Animés de G. Lebret. Spiral binding. Printed in Lille. Paris: Dargaud S.A. Éditeur. FF 230 from Librairie de l'avenue Henry Veyrier, Saint-Ouen, August, '01.

See an almost identical volume in the same year with the same title from the same publisher. The differences here lie in the cover, binding, and publisher. The covers are no longer a multi-colored cartoon scene of many animals on the front and a candle on the back but rather cloth-covered boards with a gold stamped title on the front. The binding is no longer the canvas binding of the other copy, but rather a ring binding of eleven slotted rubber (?) rings. This edition also declares a printer (Liévin Daniel) on the bottom of its last page. Let me repeat my other comments from that edition, since they apply equally. One of the most playful books I have seen in a while. Sections of La Fontaine's text are numbered to correspond to cartoon pictures. There is lots of wit here. A steam kettle boiling in one picture (DW) is smelled in the next! Imagination stamps these illustrations. The lion has torn half his skin off in pursuing the mosquito; the dove carries off the fowler's pot, in which the fowler's imagination was already cooking him; the miller's son picks his nose. "The Cat and the Old Rat" is one of the best here, including the cat's attempt to disguise himself in a bag. "Les Animals Malade de la Peste" is a magnificent two-page sweep. The last story is also excellent: "Le Savetier et le Financier." Twenty-three fables. T of C at the back.

1946 Magic Tales. Retold by Frances Ross, Elisabeth Harner, Wilhelmine Mohme, Stella M. Rudy, and Eugene Bahn. Illustrated by Arthur Griffith, Helen Osborn, and Phoebe Flory. Columbus, Ohio: Charles Merrill. $1.25 at Lost Dauphin, Oshkosh, June, '88.

One Aesopic tale with a single black-and-white illustration: "The Lost Ax." A good example of the way Aesop shows up in a basic storybook.

1946 More Streets and Roads. By William S. Gray and May Hill Arbuthnot. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Basic Readers: Curriculum Foundation Program, The 1946-47 Edition. Chicago: Scott, Foresman and Company. $6 from Renaissance, June, '98.

Two fables appear late in this colorful reader that I may have been using when I was in the early grades. MSA (276) is told in traditional fashion up to the point where the father in town realizes that they have not pleased anyone. They then untie the donkey from the pole and drive it along just as they had done in the first place. SW (280) is also colorfully illustrated, but alas presents the bet in the poorer fashion. Here is testimony to Aesop's appeal as it was felt in the 40's.

1946 My Tale is Twisted! Or The Storal to this Mory, With a Glowing Introduction by the Author Himself. Colonel Stoopnagle. Illustrated by Charles Pearson. Hardbound. NY: M.S. Mill Co. $49.90 from alibris, Dec., '04.

I have had such fun reading this book! I am going to copy its fables and try some of them first with my community and then in my next fable lecture. I had sought this book for years since my sister Meg sent me an excerpt that she had used with a class of hers. The book was virtually impossible to find. The alibris price suggests that its seller also knows that it is rare. Reading these stories is fun. Stoopnagle himself warns in his introduction that it is not to be read at a single setting. I can manage about one or two stories, and my mind is whirring. The clever transformations are not the result of simple by-the-book mechanisms. Phrase after phrase makes a listener or reader stop to think--or "thop to stink," as Stoopnagle would say. Among the best treasures is a second moral thrown in after GGE: "Let deeping logs sly" (8). Another fine moral finishes off "The Bat and the Curds," namely "Clancy foes do not a Mockter dake, nor iron cars a baige" (36). Twenty-six fables are followed by eighteen Tairy Fales. Pearson's illustrations--for about every third story--are what one would expect from a good journalistic work: they are humorous cartoons, exploiting some of the fun of the situation in easily received manner. Stoopnagle's acknowledgements include the "Saturday Evening Post," Aesop, and his ancestors.

1946 Suomen Kansan Satuia (Finnish Fables). Hardbound. Dust jacket. Helsinki: Sanomalehti Oy Nylandin Kirjapaino. $12.03 from Paper Chase Antiques, North Bridgton, Maine, through eBay, Sept., '99.

Here is a book I have come to possess because it was advertised as "Finnish Fables." My suspicion from looking at the simple line-drawings is that these are more fairy tales than fables. At any rate, the book has 200 pages. It seems to have twenty-one individual stories and two further sets of seven and eight sets, respectively. The title-page lists what I am sure are editor and artist, as well as one other person, but online dictionaries seem not to be able to help us understand their individual functions! Watch out for the orgy on 161!

1946 The Improved Aesop for Intelligent Modern Children. Bret Harte. To which is added "The Piracy of Bret Harte's Fables" by Charles Meeker Kozlay. Limited edition of 250 copies. Berkeley: The Elkus Press. $25 from Bowie & Company, Seattle, July, '93. Extra copy for $20 from Serendipity Books, Dec., '07.

FG, FS, and WL, each done with wit. The fox knows that grapes so high would be "impoverished." The fox waits for the second course, which is stork, stuffed with olives. The moral is "True hospitality obliges the host to sacrifice himself for his guests"! The wolf, proven wrong twice, pleads insanity and devours the lamb. Kozlay's essay traces some of the fascinating history of mutual charges of theft by Harte and G.T. Lanigan, author of Out of the World. In fact, none of Harte's fables is in my 1878 Out of the World but all three are in my Fables by G. Washington Aesop from 1878/1925? (10, 40, and 48), where they are duly attributed to Harte. There is even another WL falsely attributed to Harte on 28 of the same little volume! Kozlay includes a delightful letter on a plagiarist's reworking of his own work by Mark Twain. Typos include forgotton (FS), hospitatity (FS), and lucious (Kozlay). This pamphlet is one of those rare little treasures one finds sometimes on a cloudy day.

1946 The Monthly Magazine of the Junior Heritage Club. Robert Lawson and Munro Leaf. Pamphlet. NY: The Junior Heritage Club: The Heritage Press. $8.40 from Gryphon Bookshops, NY, August, '98.

Here is a pamphlet helping to market the Leaf and Lawson version of Aesop's Fables. It has three sections on, respectively, Aesop, Lawson, and Leaf. The writer of the first is "G.M.," while the second and third are autobiographical. The first essay is unfortunately inaccurate. "The first man to make a real collection of Aesop's fables was a Roman named Babrius" (4), and Babrius wrote in Latin. The writer claims, rightly I think, that a person going into a bookshop in 1946 for a book of Aesop's fables would most likely be given a translation either by Croxall or by Jacobs. The challenge which the editors gave Munro Leaf was to write a good twentieth century English without American slang or wisecracks. The first essay quotes one of two early reviewers: "I think Munro Leaf has done an exceedingly commonplace and not even clever modern job of Aesop." Lawson's autobiographical essay takes him on a long journey through being in the army in World War I and making greeting cards with his wife to becoming a book illustrator. He closes with his credo "that children are reasoning human beings, with at least as much good sense, humor and taste as grown-ups, and probably more" (13). Leaf's story took him, for example, to Grammar Can Be Fun. The only person Leaf is aware of who did not like Ferdinand the Bull was Adolph Hitler!

1946 The Tiger and the Rabbit and other tales. Told by Pura Belpré. Illustrated by Kay Peterson Parker. First edition. Hardbound. Boston: The Riverside Press. $12 from an unknown source, 2001. 

Fifteen Puerto Rican stories. The first of them, "The Tiger and the Rabbit" (1-11), contains a number of standard fable motifs, like the cheese at the bottom of the well, the tiger allowing himself to be tied up, the monkey being thrown up into the air so that he can be better eaten, monkeys being promised immunity if they untie the tiger, and the rabbit riding the tiger as his "mount." "The Wolf, the Fox, and the Jug of Honey" (41) is the old folktale in which allegedly christened children are named by the level of the goodies consumed by the clever fox. Here they include "Just Begun" and "Past Half." "La Hormiguita" (55) is the series story about who is most powerful. Here it begins not with the marriage of a daughter but with an ant breaking a leg on snow. The series here is ant, snow, sun, cloud, wind, wall, mouse, cat, dog, stick, fire, water, bull, knife, man, death, and God. God cures the ant. In "The Dance of the Animals" (99), the would-be victim goat is thrown to safety by his very attacker, King Lion.

1946 Tuck-in Tales. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Chicago: Merrill Company. $8 at Walnut Antique Mall, April, '93. Extra copy for $20 from Magers & Quinn, Dec., '97.

Large-format pamphlet containing nine stories with a decidedly international flavor. The third among them is "Tommy Turtle," a faithful version of Kalila & Dimna's TT story. Tommy wears a big hat with a feather and says "Yoo hoo" unprovoked when he sees some children he knows in Tucker Town. Good condition.

1946 Who Was Aesop? Aesop's Fables. Hardbound. Hollywood, CA: A Who Story A Graphic Educational Phono-Book A-103: Graphic Educational Productions Inc. $6 from Antiques of Windermere, Orlando, FL, through eBay, August, '04. 

This large (10¾" x 10¼") book with a 78-rpm record enclosed is remarkable first of all for the lively red face of Aesop that stands out on its cover. Around this figure are arrayed the characters from some well-known fables: LM, a stork, TH, FC, and MSA. Inside, a text deliberately slanted towards children introduces an Aesop talking with children. Seeing a crow leads him to tell FC. This story is presented in three pages of four panels each. An intermediate page presents an attractive older Aesop talking with the fox. The fox, he asserts, does not always have the last laugh, and so he tells FS, which is presented in similar fashion. The transition here involves noting first that for FS, one bad turn leads to another. Aesop wants to exemplify that one good turn also leads to another, and so he tells LM. After a two-page glimpse at Aesop's life, the book presents on one page each MSA and TH, each with a number of small panels that tell the story eloquently. In the last panel of MSA, we see just the ears of the donkey protruding from the water. Watch out to preserve the record inside this book!

1946 Why the Bear Has a Short Tail; The Man Who Kept House; How the Rabbit Fooled the Whale and the Elephant. Selected by Louise B. Williams. Illustrated by Sari. Wonder Books #508. NY: Wonder Books. $.50 at The Antiquarium, Oct., '97.

The first story is the story so often told of the wolf fishing. The third story has the clever rabbit pitting the whale and elephant against each other without their knowing it. Ludwig Bemelmans originally wrote this story under the title "Rosebud" in 1942. This Wonder Book has a detached back cover.

1946 12 Fables de La Fontaine. Mises en musique par Octave Crémieux. Illustrées par Frédéric Delanglade. Limited to 1192 copies. Paperbound. Printed in Paris. Paris: "La Photolith," L. Delaporte. FF 385 from Nicolas Rémon, Livres anciens, Vernaison, St. Ouen, Clignancourt, July, '01.

Here is one of the most delightful works I have come across in some time. It was one of four that Nicolas Rémon found for me as I stopped through his place by chance before I got to the more usual concentration of booksellers in the Marché Dauphine. After a portrait of La Fontaine, we come across twelve folios, each dedicated to a fable. The most striking thing about these is the transformation on the first page of each of the title into a picture. They are ingenious! My favorites include WL, CJ, TMCM, and FG. Inside each folio is, on the left, a text with a beautiful initial and, on the right, a full-page illustration by Delanglade. The text finishes if necessary on the fourth side, followed by a catching little colored tailpiece. In fact, I find the tailpieces and the initials more impressive than the full-page illustrations. The best of the full-sized illustrations may be TMCM. There follows then, in a separate booklet, a musical setting for each of the twelve fables, preceded in each case by another printing of the clever title. There is a T of C at the back. Rémon's note mentions that it is the first printing of the illustrations and that it is rare. I feel very lucky to have found it. The title-page here says "Préfacées par Pierre Varenne," but there is no preface. Might he have done the clever titles?

1946/48 Cinderella Hassenpfeffer and Other Tales Mein Grossfader Told. Dave Morrah. With Drawings by the Author. NY: Rinehart & Co. $2 at the Lantern, DC, Feb., '91. Extra copy for $.50 at Pageturners in Omaha, Aug., '90. Extra copy of the fourteenth printing (1960) for $1.50 from Dutton's, Burbank, Aug., '93.

Ten fables get handled in this collection, all receiving non-traditional endings. The approach is the same as in Who Ben Kaputen Der Robin (1960). The best have the fox eating the stork, the crow breaking the pitcher, and the ox driving the dog from the manger with his snoring. A cute and enjoyable sidetrack from the main line of Aesop. The best illustrations are for FS and CP.

1946/50 First Fairy Tales. Retold by Mildred L. Kerr and Frances Ross. Illustrated by Mary Sherwood Jones and Ray Evans, Jr. Columbus: Charles E. Merrill Co. $5.50 at Aamstar, Colorado Springs, March, '94. Extra copies for $3 at Rummage-o-rama, Jan., '88, and for $3.50 from Cedar Creek Antiques, Aug., '91.

One fable is included under "Silly Tales": "The Donkey and the Little Dog" (67). Eight pages and eight charming black-and-white illustrations by Ray Evans.

1946/81 Félix Maria Samaniego: Fábulas. Paperbound. Eighth Edition. Madrid: Colleción Austral No. 632: Espasa-Calpe, S.A. $3.50 from Bookhouse in Dinkytown, Minneapolis, Dec., '97.

Samaniego's 157 verse fables in nine books, with a T of C and prologue at the front.

1946? Choix de Fables Pour Les Petits. (cover: Fables de La Fontaine.)  Canvas-bound. Printed in Belgium. Liège: Editions Chagor. FF 90 from Librairie de l'avenue Henry Veyrier, Saint-Ouen, August, '01.

This oversized canvas-bound children's book of colorable pictures is in keeping with the two Belgian books titled Fables Choisies and dated "1946?" The illustrations are those found there. Here the pictures are all signed by an artist whose logo suggests that his name is something like "LePaille" or "Le Rallie." The first image here, colored by a young hand, is FS, identical with page 7 of the smaller Fables Choisies volume mentioned above. Here it lacks a text, perhaps because a page has fallen out after the full-colored title-page. This full-colored page looks as though it might also serve as a cover when the hardcover boards are taken away in cheaper editions. The hardcover's picture of the financier and cobbler by Robert Rigo is nicely done. Inside this book there is often a text-page on the left and a picture-page on the right. Sometimes a text is put in a box inside an illustration, the whole taking up only one page. DW is somehow isolated on 22 as a text without an illustration. Surprisingly, at that point halfway through the book we meet a new full-colored page that looks suspiciously like another cover: it shows La Fontaine as marionette-director with strings tied to various animal actors. Pagination starts anew in this second volume. The text for FK is on 3 of this second volume, while its illustration appears on 22 of the second volume.

1946? Fables Choisies de la Fontaine et Florian. Liège, Belgium: Imprimerie Gordinne. 75 Francs from Paris, July, '98.

Large-format children's book containing twenty-five fables. The book is reminiscent of two I have listed under "1936?," which were also produced in Belgium. Like those, this book combines colored full-page illustrations (eight here) with black-and-white (seventeen). Like those, the artists here--unnamed, and apparently without signatures in the illustrations--rely very heavily on the tradition, including Rabier. I enjoy the cartoon-like illustration of the last fable (50), in which two almost-bald older men fight over a comb. Downright eerie is the illustration of the blind man, wearing only shorts, carrying the lame man on his back while the latter guides his hand (45). Do not the goose-killer on 5 and the exploding frog on 39 come from Rabier? Both GA (29) and FG (33) are strong, simple statements in color of traditional motifs.

1946? Fables Choisies de la Fontaine et Florian. Canvas spine. Paris: Collection Paul Duval. 102 Francs from Librairie Henry Veyrier, Clignancourt, Paris, August, '99.

I would naturally think that this large-format children's book is identical with another slightly larger in size with the same cover and title-page from Imprimerie Gordinne in Belgium, for which I have also guessed at a date of "1946?" They are not the same book. Is that pasted label on the title-page the name of a publisher? It reads "Collection Paul Duval, Elbeuf - Paris - 7e - Série bis." Though it is not the same book and apparently not from the same publisher, it does have some ties to the other book. Before examining them, let me mention that this book starts its pagination again after the first six pages. Thus MSA on 8 of the earlier volume is here on the second Page 3. The five scenes of the other book are reduced to four, the page is reversed, and individual colors are changed. Perhaps the plates were simply constructed afresh, but the similarity cannot be missed! The same plate as was presented colored there for WC on 15 is presented here on 7, again reversed, now in green-and-white. The same text plate for "Le Geai paré des plumes du paon," which there (22) was followed by a colored picture, is given without any picture here on the first Page 6. Like all other texts, it is here surrounded by a repeated picture-border combining many fable illustrations. GA, there in color on 29, is here reversed and in brown-and-white on 31. OF, there on 39, is here reversed on 21 and given new colors. LM, there (41) in black-and-white, is reversed here, done in green-and-white, and signed with a name something like "LeFall's." "Le Lion et le Moucheron" (47 there) is here reversed and freshly colored on 9. There is no T of C. The mysteries of publishing history are many!

1946? Für Gross und Klein: Eine Sammlung von 10 Märchen aus aller Welt und 10 Fabeln. Zusammengestellt von Karl-Sieghard Seipoldy. Mit Bildern von Ottilie Ehlers-Kollwitz. Hardbound. Berlin/Leipzig: Volk und Wissen Verlags. €3 from Bücherwelt, Berlin, August, '07.

This little book intersperses ten fables with its ten Märchen. The special appeal of the book for me lies in its full-page colored illustrations (9, 17, 24, 36, 48, and especially 61). The colored designs on both covers are also well done. Unfortunately, none of these -- or of the smaller black-and-white designs -- are for the fables. Most of the fables here are old chestnuts: FS, FC, FG, BC, LM, "The Lion and the Ass," and "The Monkey and the Chess Game." "The Ass and the Wolf" is surprising (38). The latter is hungry. The former says "Have pity on me. I have a thorn in my foot." The wolf answers "I feel truly sorry for you. My conscience forces me to free you from this pain." With that, he tears the ass apart. When the wolf extends his condolences to the shepherd who has lost sheep to a drought, the dog mentions that the wolf has great sympathy when he himself suffers from his neighbor's loss (46). In "The Cuckoo" (58), the cuckoo asks a starling what people say about various birds. When the starling volunteers nothing about the cuckoo, the latter asks what they say about him. "I do not know." "Then I will avenge their thanklessness by forever talking about myself." This book is hard to date. It refers to a 1946 regulation. I am surprised to see East Germany producing a children's book of this quality soon after the war.

1947 A New Aesop Tales. Translated by Gaishi Yamagishi. Published by Kazuo Ishikawa. Second edition. Kanda, Tokyo: Shufunotomo Company. See 1941/47.

1947 A World of Stories for Children. Edited by Barrett H. Clark and M. Jagendorf. Illustrated by Evelyn Copelman. Hardbound. Indianapolis and NY: The Bobbs-Merrill Company. $8 from Donna Rogers, Independence, KS, through eBay, April, '08.

This 820-page book has a large subtitle to match: "The Great Fairy, Folk Tales and Legends of the World from the Earliest Times to the late Nineteenth Century." Pages 27 through 63 are given to fables without illustration and with notation of variant titles. A glance suggests that the language is archaic: "whereof Aesop rehearseth such a fable" (27). This book was once in the Montgomery County Circulating Library. Other chapters go to Greek Tales, Arabian Nights, English Folk and Fairy Tales, French Folk and Fairy Tales, Grimm's Tales, Hans Christian Andersen, and Norwegian Folk and Fairy Tales.

1947 Aesop's Fables. With drawings by Fritz Kredel. Illustrated Junior Library: Grosset & Dunlap. No place or translator acknowledged. $5 at Renaissance Books, Feb., '87. And boxed versions of the same edition with a "Waving Aesop" painting attached to cover: one with purple trim for $8.50 from Blake, June, '93, before and the other with red trim for $7.50 at Logos in Santa Cruz, Aug., '89, after the assigning of an LC card number on the back of the title page. Also, as of July, '89, a copy of the 1987 printing in excellent condition; it changes the order of the fables in several places.

Simple artwork that can be of value. The book includes several colored pages besides a number of black-and-whites. The tellings of the tales may be most helpful for the clear morals.

1947 Aesop's Fables. With Drawings by Fritz Kredel. Hardbound. Library binding. NY: Illustrated Junior Library: Grosset & Dunlap. $5 from Clare Leeper, July, '96.

I already have a number of different versions of Fritz Kredel's book in the collection. This one belongs to the group with a large format. It has what I believe is called a "Library Binding." The cover is a plain heavy orange cloth with just the FG design on the front and the "Illustrated Junior Library" logo and name on the back. The covers and spine add green to the orange and black. Several pages from each end of the book, one finds colored pages that are exact replicas of the colored covers of the standard version. Otherwise it is the same book with simple artwork and clear morals.

1947 Aesop's Fables. With drawings by Fritz Kredel. Dust jacket. Illustrated Junior Library. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. No translator acknowledged. $2 at Bookman's Corner, March, '95. Extra copies: (1) without a dust jacket, inscribed in 1954, a gift of Dan Gatti, S.J., Spring, '92; (2) like these first two, without an LC card number but with a pre-zip-code dust jacket for $6.95 from Blake, Oct., '94; (3) with an LC card number and a pre-zip-code dust jacket for $7.50 from The Old Book Shop, Independence, May, '93; and (4) with some markings for $2 from Carpetbaggers, New Orleans, June, '87. Also the 1981 printing of the paperback, with an extra paperback from 1983.

The same as the previous entry but in a smaller format, with scaled down drawings and water colors. The paperback edition matches this smaller edition in size. My clues to the early character of the Bookman's Corner copy are the $1.25 price tag from Marshall Fields and especially the back flyleaf's list of "The First Fifteen Titles" in the Illustrated Junior Library series. Other back flyleaf lists have more editions in the series.

1947 Aesop's Foibles. With six hundred quotations of the great minds of the ages. Edited and illustrated by Oscar Berger. NY: John Day Co. $5 at Snelling and Selby in St. Paul, July, '85. Extra copy in red cover without dust jacket for $10 at Lien's, Minneapolis, July, '88. Extra copy in yellow cover without dust jacket, inscribed in '55, for $2.50 at Dundee, April, '93.

Aesop really does not figure in here, except that (1) he is quoted in every one of the forty chapters, each of which relates to one trait or virtue; (2) some of the drawings relate to Aesop's stories (like that of the wolf in sheep's clothing). A harmless collector's item.

1947 An Early Manuscript of the Aesop Fables of Avianus and Related Manuscripts. Adolph Goldschmidt. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Studies in Manuscript Illumination #1. Princeton: Princeton University Press. $35.50 from Ohio Book Store, Cincinnati, through Interloc, May, '98.

This large-format work concentrates on the ten Aesopic fables of Avianus found in Ms. Lat. Nouv. Acq. 1132 at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The miniatures for all ten are reproduced and commented upon here. The miniatures are unfortunately not of high quality. Apparently done around 900 in Northern France, this work is dependent on an earlier model from Southern France. The book also considers the Leyden Romulus (Limoges, c. 1030), which is also a copy. The fables here are from Ademar, and their illustrations are colored. Nine of this manuscript's illuminations are presented, again in black-and-white. A casual observer will want to enjoy Figure 32, which shows the same stone "being picked up, given, taken, thrown and as striking" (39), i.e., five times on one page. I find the Leyden Manuscript's illuminations much more engaging than those in the Paris Manuscript. Goldschmidt draws more contrasts than comparisons from the two works. Goldschmidt goes on to discuss twelve fables on the Bayeux Tapestry. He then presents in black-and-white four colored illuminations from a Marie de France manuscript from around 1300 in Hamburg. There are also three very helpful illuminations from a manuscript of Vincent of Beauvais. Throughout, Goldschmidt works closely with--and sometimes against--the work of Georg Thiele. This is a helpful visual work.

1947 Basni. I.A. Krilov. Various illustrators. Dust jacket. Moscow: Ogiz. $25 at Turtle Island, Berkeley, Jan., '91.

An artistic book with a raised cover portrait and a variety of mature artistic styles in the black-and-white illustrations. T of C at the back. The price is even on the book and dust jacket! Do not overlook the individual title-illustrations and endpieces, not unlike Bewick's "tailpieces." The best of the illustrations are of the exploding frog (10-11), the bear and the gardener (14), the exhausted fox (29), the quartet (46-7), the monkey and the spectacles (70-71), and the crow in peacock's feathers (96).

1947 Childcraft in Fourteen Volumes. Volume Four: Tales and Legends. Chicago: The Quarrie Corporation. See 1931/47.

1947 Der Wettlauf zwischen dem Igel und dem Hasen auf der kleinen Heide bei Buxtehude. Bilder und Schrift von Wilh. Und Lilo Jacob-Roscher, Buxtehude. 2. Auflage. Paperbound. Berlin and Buxtehude: Hermann Hübener Verlag. €9.50 from Antiquariat Ihring, Berlin, August, '07.

Is this famous story of the race between the hare and the hedgehog a fable? I admit that the charm of this booklet made me say "yes" for now, at least to including the booklet in the collection. This is hedgehog life as we children knew it from Steiff toys. This 32-page pamphlet has an illustration on every right-hand page, once the story starts. The main character here is "Der Swinegel." He talks with the hare at a junction with signs pointing to Hamburg and Buxtehude. The cutest picture in the booklet may be that of mother hedgehog giving baths to her hedgehog children, while one of them sits on the hedgehog pot. Another strong image shows the hare lying on the field exhausted after the race. The moral is twofold: despise no one, and choose a wife that looks just like you! Might this booklet have been a souvenir booklet done by the city itself? Buxtehude is not far outside Hamburg. The last page shows the seal of Buxtehude. The introduction at the beginning of the pamphlet is titled not from the story but simply "Buxtehude." According to this introduction, the story was given its final form in 1840 by Wilhelm Schröder from Oldendorf "in niederdeutscher Mundart." The Brothers Grimm took over this version in their collection. The verso of the title-page says that it is a second edition but does not say when the first might have been.

1947 Ésope: Fables choisies. Avec Notes et Lexique grec-français par H. Berthaut. 3e Édition. Paperbound. Paris: Librairie A. Hatier. €6 from Stavros Lenis, Epsilon, Paris, Jan.,' 05. 

Here is a pamphlet for learning Greek. Its first 52 pages introduce Aesop and his fables and then offer forty-five fables of increasing length and complexity. Copious footnotes explain grammar. Vocabulary runs then from 53 to 95, followed by a final T of C. Our high school class had a Homer pamphlet of about this size for learning Greek. How fortunate that this collection could save an ephemeral item like this!

1947 Etonnantes Histoires de Bêtes d'apres Monsieur de la Fontaine. Racontées et illustrées par Madame Y. Chandelon pour ses petits Amis des Enfants. Paperbound. Printed in Belgium. Paris: Les Editions Leclercq. FF 250 from Nicolas Rémon, Livres anciens, Vernaison, St. Ouen, Clignancourt, July, '01.

Here is a truly unusual oversized book. Its formula for each of ten fables involves from ten to fourteen pages. On these there are several black-and-white full-page illustrations and many small one-color designs interwoven with a very clever prose text telling the story in much more detail than La Fontaine's fable offers. After we have made our way through those elements, we find La Fontaine's traditional verse fable. We become like the fox on the cover, poring over the book by night. Chanderon explains to "her dear friends the infants" that La Fontaine wrote for "grandes personnes" in their language, not for children. In the first story, e.g., we learn that the two pigeons grew up without a mother and found their father dead while they were young. For those few thoughts we have four different designs: two baby birds in bed, an older bird following a hearse, two young birds with sailor caps and outfits, and two tombstones showing "Papa" and "Maman." Nicely done! The illustrations and designs are anything but literal representations; they suggest and evoke moments of the story. Rémon aptly describes them as highly personal. Chandelon's imagination is lively throughout, as when the characters in TMCM are named Lerat Deschamps and Lerat de Ville! Among the best illustrations are the furry cat on 26, the careless lamb sleeping on the river-bank on 36, the country mouse smoking his pipe at the end of TMCM (65), and the dancing reeds (98). The cicada here (104) is an old Bohemian, a professional singer. There is a T of C at the back.

1947 Fables de Florian I. Illustrées par Max Just. Paris: Éditions Studio Raber. 10 Francs from A Buchinist on the Quai de la Seine, August, '99.

A lovely little book in a set of two, 4¾" x 4¼". Fifty-five fables and ten very nice two-color illustrations. These latter are: "La Fable et la Verité" (6), "Le Roi et les deux Bergers" (20), "Le Calife" (20), "La Mort" (30), "Le Chat et la Lunette" (36), "Le Singe qui montre la Lanterne magique" (48), "Le Phénix" (64), "Le deux Persans" (74), "Le Sanglier et les Rossignols" (84), and "La Balance de Minos" (90). My prizes among these illustrations go to "Le Chat et la Lunette" and "Le Singe qui montre la Lanterne magique." There is a little "Calife" on the cover in red and black.

1947 Fables de Florian II. Illustrées par Max Just. Paris: Éditions Studio Raber. 10 Francs from A Buchinist on the Quai de la Seine, August, '99.

A lovely little book in a set of two, 4¾" x 4¼". Fifty-two fables plus an epilogue, with ten very nice two-color illustrations. These latter are: "Le Renard Deguisé" (6), "Le Renard qui preche" (16), "L'Aigle et la Colombe" (16), "Le Pacha et le Dervis" (38), "Le Philosophe et le Chat-Huant" (46), "Les deux Paysans et le Nuage" (56), "Le Chien coupable" (66), "Le Coq Fanfaron" (72), "L'Ane et la Flute" (80), and "Le Crocodile et la Esturgeon" (88). My prizes among these illustrations go to "Le Renard Deguisé" and "L'Ane et la Flute." There is a little portrait of two women before a large mask on the cover in red and black. T of C at the back.

1947 Fables de la Fontaine. Illustrations Armand Rapeño. Hardbound. Éditions Albin Michel. $9.99 from The Old Paper Archive, Marlboro, NJ, through eBay, May, '07.

This book represents a curious addition to the collection. I had the feeling when I saw it that I had seen it before. I checked my records before bidding on the book but probably missed the tilde in Rapeño and so believed incorrectly that I knew nothing of this illustrator. A closer look after I received the book confirmed my sense that I knew this man's work, and I began to think that I had bought the same book twice. Not true! What I had already bought is the 1995 reproduction titled "Fables de la Fontaine" by Albin Michel Jeunesse. As I write there, there are eighteen fables in this oversize book. The first and last of the eighteen have three pages. All others have two, and the layout of these two pages is formulaic. On the left page is a title and La Fontaine's text. (The 1995 edition will add a clever design by Joëlle Jolivet.) The right page is a full page of color illustration without border signed "Rapeño." The style of these seems to me to suggest the illustrations of someone like Milo Winter. Perhaps the most interesting of them has the reflection of the stag growing right out of the small point of land on which he stands. OF is a very strong visualization of the scene. These original pictures are fuller than the slightly cropped versions in the 1995 edition. How nice to find my way back to the original edition mentioned once in the later book!

1947 Fables de la Fontaine. Illustrations Armand Rapeño. Hardbound. Éditions Albin Michel. $100 from Johanson Rare Books, Baltimore, July, '08.

Here is a second "first edition" copy of Rapeño's work from 1947 with exactly the same numbers on the obverse of the title-page, but with a different cover. Here the cover shows the tortoise passing the negligent hare. This copy cost over ten times what the other copy cost! I will repeat some of my remarks from that edition. I mentioned there that I thought I already had the book. Now that turned out to be true, but I certainly thought it again. The tilde in Rapeño's name is causing me some problems, but it also brings me lovely books. I noticed that Rapeño was one of the most frequently used artists in a recent favorite featuring all sorts of artists on La Fontaine. There are eighteen fables in this oversize book. The first and last of the eighteen have three pages. All others have two, and the layout of these two pages is formulaic. On the left page is a title and La Fontaine's text. The right page is a full page of color illustration without border signed "Rapeño." The style of these seems to me to suggest the illustrations of someone like Milo Winter. Perhaps the most interesting of them has the reflection of the stag growing right out of the small point of land on which he stands. OF is a very strong visualization of the scene. In this copy, GA, TMCM, WC, TT, FS, FG, and "Le Héron" are particularly well printed.

1947 Favorite Stories. Illustrated by Francis Kirn. No editor acknowledged. Racine: Whitman. $3.15 at Twice Sold Tales, Nampa, Idaho, March, '96. Extra copy for $5 from Anne's Antiques at Omaha Flea Market, Nov., '90.

Five fables are told well in this typical Whitman volume with large pages, cheap paper, and simple drawings. BC, TH, "The Cunning Fox," BW, and "The Wolf and the Kid." Only BW gets more than the standard treatment, which includes two pages and one illustration. The tellings are good. I can find no overlap with other Whitman volumes.

1947 Favorite Stories. No artist or editor acknowledged. Racine: Whitman Publishing Company. See 1944/47/48.

1947 Ivan Andrejevic Krylov: Bajky. Translated by Julius Dolansky (?). Woodcuts by Bohdan Lacina. Afterword by Julius Dolansky. Paperbound. Prague: Nakladatelstvi ELK. $6 by mail from Zachary Cohn, Prague, August, '01. Extra copy with torn cover and loose binding for $7 from Zachary Cohn, Nov., '01

The T of C at the end of this lovely book lists fifty-two fables. Besides the title-page illustration of King Lion (the same as on the cover), I find the following three-color woodcuts: Mor Zvirat (16), Sedlak a Medved (24), Mnohozenstvi (40), Vlk a Beranek (48), Osel a Sedlak (64), Rybi Tanec (72), Sedlak a Beranek (89), and Kun a Jezdec (97). The "Sedlak a Beranek" illustration recently appeared on Ebay, selling as an individual signed woodcut with a beginning price of $49. I presume that the woodcut was not taken from a copy of the book because it boasts a signature, and the book's copy does not. This is my first fable book from Czechoslovakia. Sorry that I cannot read it! The illustrations make it worth many times the price I paid.

1947 Old Tales of Japan. Volume I. By Yuri Yasuda. Illustrations by Yoshinobu Sakakura. Japan: Dai-Nippon Printing Co. $3.20 From Dan Behnke, March, '93.

These are really three folk tales, but one of them is a traditional (though non-Aesopic) fable, and so I have included the book in the collection. That is the second story, "Nezumi No Yomeiri," the story about a mouse girl so beautiful that she must have a great husband. The string of husband-possibles runs through the sun, a cloud, the wind, and a wall. The latter mentions that a mouse is its superior, and at that point she and her parents are satisfied with Chusuke, a neighboring mouse. I would imagine that Japan was not producing many books in 1947. The colored illustrations are bright and attractive.

1947 Rambles in Storyland. By S.M. Lehrman. Illustrations by Yehuda Goodman. Second edition: Enlarged and Revised. Hardbound. London: Shapiro, Vallentine & Company. $12 from Meron Eren, Tel Aviv, through eBay, Oct., '02. 

Here are twenty numbered tales, with a T of C at the front, in a slim volume of 143 pages.. There are five full-page black-and-white illustrations scattered along the way. The middle section of three is headed "Fables and Legends," but "fable" is used loosely here. The stories are uplifting Jewish legends. I am surprised by a story I had never heard before: "The Jewish Boy Who Became Pope" (49). For me the best of the stories is "The People That Will Not Die" (71). Under a cruel king, Jews were often condemned to death, but faced one possible reprieve. Two slips of paper were put into a box, with "LIFE" on one and "DEATH" on the other. An enemy of a particular unjustly condemned Jew bribed the administrator of the box to put in two "DEATH" slips. (The administrator then went to the Jew, hoping for an even bigger bribe. The Jew tried to get him the bigger bribe, but this line of the story seems then to be forgotten.) At the execution, the pious Jew prayed, but then taking a slip from the box and not looking at it, he ate it. Then he challenged the king to have a guard examine the remaining slip. If it said "LIFE," then his first slip had been a slip for death. But if it said "DEATH," then his was a slip for life. Clever fellow!

1947 Rogue Reynard. Being a tale of the Fortunes and Misfortunes and divers Misdeeds of that great Villain, Baron Reynard, the Fox, and how he was served with King Lion's Justice. Based upon The Beast Saga. Written by Andre Norton and Pictured by Laura Bannon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company/Cambridge: The Riverside Press. $2.50 at Carriage House Antiques, Nebraska City, '92.

This is a helpful children's version of Reynard. I find it particularly good in giving a fast overview of the Reynard story. Caution: the story seems to be altered to protect children. Thus the original offense of Reynard is not the rape of Lupus' wife, but rather getting her tail frozen and lost in the "fishing" trick. Archaic language and simple art. Taped corners.

1947 Stories of Childhood. Volume One of The Child's World in six volumes. Editor: Esther M. Bjoland. Illustrator not acknowledged. Chicago: The Child's World. $5, Summer, '89. Extra copy of the 1952 printing for $4.50 at Poplar Street Books, Charlotte, June, '97.

DS, LM, MM, GA, "The Bundle of Sticks," TH, and SW. All have standard 40's illustrations, from which the colored illustration of the grasshopper (111) stands out. Compare the later edition of 1968, which has the same fables but new illustrations. Here one can find the year of the printing on the ninth page counting from the front of the book.

1947 Storytime Favorites. Selected by Theresa Ann Scott. Illustrated by Anton Loeb. (10 stories.) NY: Wonder Books. $4.50 from the Antique Mall of Logan, Iowa, July, '94. Extra copy in poorer condition for $3 from Half Price Books, San Antonio, August, '97.

This book seems to be older than either of those listed under the adjacent six-story format. The ten stories here include four fables: BW, TH, FG, and LM. Washable covers. The shepherd boy here wants wolves to come for more excitement! Simple art. The endpapers and T of C page are handled differently here. In contrast to the shorter book, which is in color throughout, this book alternates black-and-white and colored illustrations by pairs of pages. The two copies show interesting differences, probably mostly attributable to age: the Half Price copy adds "Grosset & Dunlap" on the title-page, gives an address for Wonder Books on its back, and advertises books in the series only up to 529, whereas the Logan copy advertises all from 501 through 553 except 510.

1947 Storytime Favorites. Selected by Theresa Ann Scott. Illustrated by Anton Loeb. (6 stories.) NY: Wonder Books: Grosset & Dunlap. [$5 from Greg Williams, March, '93.] Extra copies with some slight differences for $7 at Sebastopol Antiques, Sept., '96 and for $3.50 at Pacific Garden Mall Antique Collective, Aug., '89.

A happy little book with three fables among its six stories between washable covers. The shepherd boy here wants wolves to come for more excitement! Also FG and TH. Simple art. The Greg Williams version seems to be the oldest. Its cover is purple rather than red and has a slightly different handling of the "Wonder" logo. The Sebastopol copy is like it in not listing "A Divison of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc." on its title page and in offering on its last page a simple list of many titles. It is unlike it in changing the cover logo and color (to red). The Pacific Garden copy has picture-advertisements on its last page with references to TV shows and space travel. Its price has gone up from $.29 to $.35. [As of August, '97, I cannot locate the Greg Williams copy.]

1947 Tales of the Monks from the Gesta Romanorum. Edited by Manuel Komroff. Hardbound. NY: Tudor Publishing Company. $10 from Bookmarks Bookstore, Corning, NY, through abe, April, '99. 

This remains a curious book of 181 stories. I knew it in the version of 1876/1959 by Charles Swan, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper. See my comments on that edition. During this reading, I have been struck by how frequently stories are either romantic or rhetorical. The latter feature speech and clever counter-speech. The former involve many kings with beautiful daughters. Many knights defend helpless princesses. Many stories start by referring to Roman kings and are often about them and their families, especially their beautiful daughters. One story, #153, spins out into a novella, 38 pages long. Unusual but engaging are the long stories of the birth and life of Pope Gregory (#81) and of Placidus, who later becomes Eustacius (#110). He has a wild Job-like life, spiced up with elements from the story of Androcles and also with a fiery furnace like Nebuchadnezzar's. Story #28, with its clever ploy of the "weeping dog," is strong; it is repeated later in literature, perhaps in the "Heptameron." The curiosities also include several stories based on alphabet word-games (e.g. #42). Story #56, "The Envying Merchant and the Prince," is a tour-de-force of macabre exemplification. The most strongly Aesopic stories here are "Do Not Drive Away the Flies" (#51); "Three Truths" (#58); "Three Crowing Cocks" (#68);"The Blind and the Lame" (#71);"The Donkey and the Lapdog" (#79); AL (#104, but Androcles is a knight turned brigand, and years pass before the story's second phase); "The Ungrateful Steward" (#119); "The Secret Black Crow" (#125), which includes a strange new ending; "The Serpent and the Man Once Wronged" (#141); "The Archer and the Nightingale" (#167); and "The Frozen Serpent" (#174). Tales with Aesopic touches, background, or a history of inclusion among fables include #44, 83, 85, 91, 93, 99, and 171. Komroff removes the morals to let the stories stand on their own as literary pieces. In fact, I am surprised at how many are not very good stories. I graded them on this trip through, and there were few grades of A. This edition of Komroff has typos on 52, line 7 "aslas: 54, line 1 "dewlt"; and 88, line 2 "befoe."

1947 The Aesop for Children. Pictures by Milo Winter. No editor named. Eau Claire: E.M. Hale and Company. See 1919/47/49.

1947 The Aesop for Children. Pictures by Milo Winter. No editor named. Chicago: Rand McNally. See 1919/47/62.

1947 The Aesop for Children. Pictures by Milo Winter. No editor named. Chicago: Rand McNally. See 1919/47/84.

1947 The Aesop for Children. Pictures by Milo Winter. No editor named. ©1919, 1947 Checkerboard Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc. Printed in Korea. NY: Checkerboard Press. See 1919/47/92?.

1947 The Stout-Hearted Cat: A Fable for Cat Lovers. Alexander M. Frey. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. With drawings by Hans Fischer. First printing. Dust jacket. NY: Henry Holt and Company. $15 by mail from Greg Williams, April, '94.

This breezy, 140-page little book makes for a very enjoyable read at one sitting. Both the text and the abundant drawings are charming. Thomas Mann rightly praises the book for "its charm, its good humor and its loving understanding of animals" (flyleaf). Though this story is not a fable in the strict sense, it has humor, satire, warmth, and heart.

1947 The Treasure Bag. Stories and Poems Selected by Lena Barksdale. Illustrated by Maurice Brevannes. NY: Borzoi: Alfred A. Knopf. $4 at the Stillwater Book Center, Jan., '97.

A simple children's collection of all sorts of stories and verse, including five Aesopic fables, each with a two-colored partial-page illustration: FG (16), DS (94), FC (110), TH (122), and OF (124). The latter also includes a full page colored illustration. In DS, the meat falls off the bridge; the moral is that it never pays to be greedy. Some crayoning throughout the book. Simple witness to the place Aesop held in children's literature at the time.

1947 Train de Fables de La Fontaine, Florian, Franc-Nohain, Samivel. Illustrées par Samivel. Lyon: L'Imprimerie Artistique en Couleurs. £25 at A.F. Roe & D. Moore, London, May, '97.

A curious and delightful book, starting from the cartoon end-papers in mint, black, and white, depicting all sorts of nonsense situations, like a man fishing from a boat with his line resting on dry land. Are those the four fabulists, one in each of the train's four cars--and again on the title-page, each helping to pull up someone from a well? Each of the four fabulists has five fables here, except for Franc-Nohain, who has four. GGE (7) has a fine illustration, as does Florian's "Le Singe qui montre la Lanterne magique" (17). (The monkey did everything the way his master had done it, except that he forgot to turn on the magic lantern's light!). One of the best from Franc-Nohain is "La Révolte des Ascenseurs" (20): they returned from their newfound liberty, because they had forgotten how to use it. Another fine Franc-Nohain fable is "Le Bouc qui s'était fait raser à l'Américaine" (24). Samivel's own fables at the end are good reflective pieces. In love most humans understand themselves about as well as a whale understands a taxicab (34). The fables here have something to say to people, and the delightful illustrations often catch the humor.

1947 Twelve Fables from Aesop from the Translation of Sir Robert [sic] L'Estrange 1692.  Illustrations by Anne Rees-Mogg, June P. Bevington, Marjory Paterson, Joan E. Thackway, and Jean I. Trower.  Hardbound.  West of England College of Art.  £ 38 from Rose's Books, Hay-on-Wye, June, '03.  

Here is a rare find.  I doubt that many copies were printed of this large-format book.  It is in very good condition.  Not in Bodemann.  There are eight strong colored illustrations here; each fable seems to get two illustrations, of which at least one is done in black-and-white.  Two of the most suggestive illustrations belong to LM.  My favorite is for TMCM: two mice hug each other in fear under a chair.  The illustrations for "Two Travellers and a Bag of Money" are modern in subject and approach; the "theft" takes place in a subway or rail station.  It is embarrassing, I think, that a class project like this makes a key mistake in the title of the book on the title-page.

1947 Walt Disney's Uncle Remus Stories. Retold by Marion Palmer. From the Original "Uncle Remus" Stories by Joel Chandler Harris. Adapted from the characters and backgrounds created for the Walt Disney motion picture "Song of the South" and other Walt Disney adaptations of the original "Uncle Remus" stories. First printing. Canvas-bound? A Giant Golden Book. Printed in USA. NY: Simon and Schuster. $3 from an unknown source, Sept., '99.

This Giant Golden Book has ninety-two pages for twenty-three stories taken from Disney materials, especially "Song of the South." The dialect is strong but easily handled. The art is vintage Disney. Stories I enjoyed and/or found new on this trip through included "Brer Bear an de Bag Full of Turkeys" (17), "Doctor Rabbit Cures de King" (19), "Why de Cricket Fambly Lives in Chimbleys" (23), "How Craney-Crow Kept His Head" (33), and "Brer Rabbit's Money Machine" (39). The observation of the crane in his new territory that all the birds here take off their heads at night is spectacular! Several pages are torn or folded. The spine is cracked and crumbling and has probably already been repaired once. Uncle Remus stories are always fun!

1947 30 Fabeln mit neuen Bildern. Wilhelm Hey. Umschlag und Zeichnungen von Hedy Zeiler. Pamphlet. Berlin: Bunte Orbis Reihe: Volksheft Serie B, #1: Orbis Verlag. DM 10 from ABC, Hamburg, May, '94. Extra copy for €6 from Antiquariat Richart Kulbach, Heidelberg, August, '07.

There are perhaps two remarkable things about this simple pamphlet. First, at last there are for Hey's fables some other pictures than the age-old and oft reprinted work of Speckter. In fact, the designs here are quite simple. Someone has begun to color in several of the illustrations (12-19). Zeiler's cover, back to front, offers a lovely winter scene. It is secondly curious that in 1947 the printing of this German book needed the permission of the French military. The old pattern from Hey's editions--namely "one fable to a page"--remains here.

1947/66 The Golden Treasury of Children's Literature. Edited and Selected by Bryna and Louis Untermeyer. Illustrated by various artists, including A. & M. Provensen for Aesop. Dust jacket. NY: Golden Press. $10 at Kultura's Books, DC, Oct., '90.

Now here is a find! The Provensens' illustrations are in the same style as, but different from, their 1965 Golden Press edition. Here they include the morals and even some Greek! Eleven fables are retold here (389-401) in the same Untermeyer version used in 1965. AL, with a simple full-color illustration by Harlow Rockwell, closes the collection (539).

1947/72 Children and Books. Fourth Edition. May Hill Arbuthnot and Zena Sutherland. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman. $4 at Pageturners, Omaha, Jan., '89.

A goldmine of comment and bibliography. Excellent introduction to Aesop, the Panchatantra, the Jatakas, and LaFontaine with good examples. Good annotated bibliographies. There are a few examples of the art used in Aesopic editions. Worth plenty of scrutiny.

1947? Aesop's Animal Fables Picture and Story Book. Illustrated by E.H. Davie. Hardbound. Printed in England. London: Juvenile Productions, Ltd. £5 from Children's Bookshop, Hay-on-Wye, July, '98. Extra copy in very good condition for $20 from Tim Bannister, Guildford, Surrey, England, through Ebay, April, '00. Second extra copy in less good condition for £6 from P.J. Hilton, Cecil Court, July, '92.

This delightful picture book makes a point of putting appropriate clothes on its animals, right from the suspenders under the turtle's shell on the cover. The camel wears a fez! The stork wears a hat when she visits the fox but is without it when she hosts him. Unpaginated. I like the expressive art, e.g., of the suicidal bunnies and frightened frogs. Each pair of pictures adds a different color to black-and-white. There are good illustrations of the crab and his mother, of the ass kicking the wolf, and of the wolf and his shadow. FM is differently told: the male frog only pretends to like the female mouse and ties them together early. TMCM is considerably shortened! "The Kid and the Wolf" has a fine moral: "If you put off doing a thing, it may never get done." There are questionable morals to several fables: "It is useless to try and do really impossible things" ("The Tortoise and the Eagle"); "Make the most of the things you have and do not envy other people" (FG); and "If you rightly own a good thing, be sure you do not lose it for something you are not certain about" (DS). A note in the Bannister copy gives 1947 as the publication date. I had earlier guessed at 1945.

1947? Fables de La Fontaine et de Florian. Édition illustrée par J.-J. Grandville. Hardbound. Printed in Belgium. Paris: Librairie Garnier Frères. $15 from Jacque Mongelli, Warwick, NY, through Bibliofind, Oct., '98.

Pictorial boards, including a cover of a dismayed MM, surrounded by various other fable images. Inscribed from mother to child in 1948. There are 122 fables from La Fontaine and 29 from Florian, all listed in both a T of C for each and an AI for each at the end of the book. This book introduced me again and better to many Grandville illustrations that I had forgotten and to many of his tailpieces that I had not noticed. The engravings are, I believe, done after Grandville. They are darker and less exact here, though they are the same size as the originals. Several Florian fables lack illustrations. Several tailpieces are changed from my 1868 edition. For example, the tailpiece for #38 (80) does not match the original: a servant animal being kicked replaces two riders moving a canon. Similarly the tailpieces on 94 and 100 are different. The tailpiece originally used with GGE is here used with the fowler story on 138 about catching one bird who is attacking another. A nice book in good condition.

1947? Iwan A. Krylow: Fabeln. Ins Deutsche übertragen von Ernst Busse. Paperback. Printed in Potsdam. Potsdam: Eduard Stichnote Verlag. DEM 33 from Kunstantiquariat Joachim Lührs, Hamburg, June, '98. Extra copy for €2 from Antiquariat Maxvorstadt, Munich, August, '07.

Here is a straightforward East German paperback with a pleasant woodcut of DLS on the cover. As the T of C at the back of the book shows, there are here forty-nine fables and a Nachwort. There are no other illustrations. Stichnote not only published the book; they printed it as well.

1948 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Arthur B. Allen. Illustrated by Harold Yates. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Great Britain. The Golden Galley Series of Junior Classics. London: Golden Galley Press, Limited. $10 from Alibris, April, '00.

I am surprised that I had not heard of this little book before. It offers one hundred numbered fables on 74 pages. It promises but does not have four colored plates. There are fourteen black-and-white illustrations. They are simple. The best of them may be for 2W (41). A check of several of the texts suggests that they are Croxall updated. The introduction says that they are "from one of the oldest collections available. The language has been modernised to help the reader." There is a T of C at the beginning.

1948 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Arthur B. Allen. Illustrated by Harold Yates. Hardbound. London: The Golden Galley Series of Junior Classics: Golden Galley Press, Limited. £ 6.50 from Estelle Bleivas, Welshpool, Wales, UK, through eBay, March, '06. 

I had found this book earlier, but that copy did not have the four colored plates, and this copy does. They are delightful! Heavy on aqua and salmon tones, they depict OF (frontispiece), "The Ant and the Fly" (32), "The Fox and the Visor Mask" (53), and "The Eagle and the Crow" (67). "The Ant and the Fly" (32) presents an unusual and striking, if somewhat cartoon-like, view of the scene. As in the other copy, there are one hundred numbered fables on 74 pages. There are fourteen black-and-white illustrations. They are simple. As I mention there, the best of them may be for 2W (41). A check of several of the texts suggests that they are Croxall updated. The introduction says that they are "from one of the oldest collections available. The language has been modernised to help the reader." There is a T of C at the beginning. This copy does not have the dust-jacket, and the other does.

1948 Animals in Story, Picture, and Rhyme. Illustrated by George Trimmer. Tall pamphlet. Printed in USA. Chicago: Merrill Company. $15 from Dealin Antiques, Sioux City, IA, March, '01.

Both covers proclaim this "A nice High Book easy to hold." It measures 12¾" x 5". Most of its selections are fables: "The Scared Little Hare," BC, "The Tiger and the Frog" (in which the frog wins the race across the river by riding on the tiger's tail), "The Fox and the Rooster," "The Two Crabs," "The Camel and the Pig," and "The Rabbit and the Ocelot" (in which the rabbit tricks the ocelot into taking his place in a cage). It pays to look inside the covers in antique stores. The art is what it should be for this little kids' book, big and colorful.

1948 Cinderella Hassenpfeffer and Other Tales Mein Grossfader Told. Dave Morrah. With Drawings by the Author. NY: Rinehart & Co. See 1946/48.

1948 Desert Fables, or Aesop in the Desert. By Florence M. Treat. Illustrated by Bertha McEwen Knipe. First edition. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. Prescott, AZ: Arizona Publishers, Inc. $35 from Liber Redux, West Sacramento, CA, through Bibliocity, Nov., '99.

This book has presented me with several surprises. First, it is not like "Flower Fables," original creations loosely based on the fable form. It is rather based directly on specific Aesopic fables. Secondly, the visual approach to the fables is often to find the characters of the fable suggested in desert scenes of rocks, succulents, clouds, or shadows. Thirdly, the story of the generation of this book is itself surprising. McEwen had only the use of her hands, and so she painted desert scenes in the late 1920's. She conceived of relating her work to Aesop's fables. Nearby lived the young invalid Treat who enjoyed creating fanciful verse. Treat delighted in putting words to McEwen's drawings. Treat's mother served as go-between linking the two artists. The Depression and World War II kept their work from getting published. Treat actually recovered and enjoyed an active life at the time of publication. After an introduction and foreword, there are twenty-four combinations of art on the left-hand page and verse on the right-hand page. The strategy of the art may be clearest on 9, 19, and 21: the characters here are not desert-dwellers, but rather the desert by its contours calls up their form. The texts presume knowledge of the fables generally and like to push on into a humorous comment. Thus the grasshopper and ant have learned the value of saving, but they are not saving for a rainy day. The rain beat both the sun and the wind (18). Often the humor is not in touch with the point or humor of the fable itself, as when a cactus looks like stag's horns (27). For me perhaps the best integration of it all is in "The Goat and the Wolf" (31-32). Some of the text's jokes I do not get, e.g., on 16. There is a T of C at the beginning and an afterword after the fables.

1948 Die Schönsten Fabeln: Eine Auswahl aus der deutschen Fabeldichtung. Zusammengestellt von Anton Kreher. Illustriert von Heinz Ort. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Singen: Oberbadischer Verlag. DEM 8 from Bücherwurm, Heidelberg, July, '01.

This 77-page anthology includes the work of eighteen fabulists. Lessing has eight fables, Lichtwer and Hagedorn five, Heine and Gellert three. Otherwise all have one. Among the best are Goethe's "Die Frösche," Heine's "Duelle," and Gleim's "Der Löwe und der Fuchs." I count thirteen black-and-white illustrations. Among the best is the illustration for Pfeffel's "Die Stufenleiter" (48). It took me seven years to catalogue this little book -- from notes that may be five years old!

1948 Fabeln. I.A. Krilow. Nachdichtung aus dem Russischen von Martin Remané. Illustriert von sowjetischen Künstlern. Dust jacket. Berlin: SWA-Verlag. DM 30 at Eckard Düwal Antiquariat, Berlin, July, '95. Extra copy without dust jacket for DEM 20 from Dresdener Antiquariat, July, '01.

I bought this book with my last money during the last few minutes of my last day in Berlin. I thought I recognized it but found it such a good copy that I took it anyway, even though Herr Düwal did not want to bargain. I was delighted when I got home to find that the copy I have is in Russian (Basni) a year earlier. The distinguishing mark of the book remains its raised cover portrait. Krylov, represented here by twenty-five fables, seems highly dependent on LaFontaine. There is a T of C at the back. The "various Soviet artists" present a variety of mature styles in the black-and-white illustrations, some of which add a color. Do not overlook the individual title-illustrations and endpieces, not unlike Bewick's "tailpieces." The best of the illustrations are of the exploding frog (10-11), the bear and the gardener (14), the exhausted fox (29), the quartet (46-7), the monkey and the spectacles (70-71), the second--human--illustration for "Schwan, Hecht und Krebs" (63), and the crow in peacock's feathers (96). This German edition uses stronger paper than the Russian. See also the Aufbau-Verlag's edition of 1952, which uses the same plates.

1948 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine, Vol. I. Illustrated by François Chauveau. #1801 of 3333. Printed in Paris. Paris: Les Bibliolatres de France: Les Minimes. $25 from Strand Rare Book Room, NY, Jan., '99.

A beautiful folio of uncut pages, boxed, numbered and even identified facing the portrait of La Fontaine before the title page as "Exemplaire N^o 1801 Spécialement imprimé pour le Docteur Georges Loublie." These volumes are not facsimiles of the original pages. For that see the facsimile of the first six books done by Firmin-Didot in 1930, and check my comments on it. These are rather fine printings of La Fontaine's text in today's orthography and type with reproductions, I gather, of Chauveau's small engravings. The colophon at the end of this volume, which contains Books I-IV, says that this edition "comporte toutes les fables et les illustrations de Chauveau choisies par La Fontaine lui-même pour les deux éditions originales de 1668 et de 1678-1694." My question would be about the illustrations: are they re-engraved by someone contemporary or perhaps photographic replicas of Chauveau's originals? In any case they appear here as much more substantial and less grainy than they are in the Firmin-Didot facsimile. This edition makes for a wonderful chance to contemplate Chauveau's work. I agree with Johanna Winkelmann (Aus dem Antiquariat, 1987, A 269) that Chauveau's illustrations suffer from a certain fixedness, lifelessness, and closedness. The artist gets the important elements of the text into the picture, and that may accomplish his main purpose. An example might be FK (III 4) on 137; from this most dramatic fable, we have little action, drama, emotion in the picture or engagement in us as we see it. Some of the illustrations avoid that tendency. AD (II 12) on 107 has a good surprised reaction from the hunter as the bird flies away. Or again the fox in FG (III 11) on 149 is in a great posture of trying to get a leg up on one of the trellis-holding tree trunks. Finally, Chauveau's illustration for "The Horse Wanting to Get Revenge Against the Stag" (IV 13) on 197 prompts good engagement by its dramatic character. Where some of the great artists like Gheeraerts seem to be looking forward in their art to developments to come, Chauveau seems to me rather to be looking back to strong, simple fable presentations of the past. T of C for this volume at the end. As with each of these volumes, the box is broken, but the portfolio cover remains intact.

1948 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine, Vol. II. Illustrated by François Chauveau. Printed in Paris. Paris: Les Bibliolatres de France: Les Minimes. $25 from Strand Rare Book Room, NY, Jan., '99.

See my comments on the first of the three volumes. This volume contains Books V-VIII. I like the outrage in the two servant girls in "The Old Woman and the Two Servant Girls" (V 6) on 21! "The Horse and the Ass" (VI 16) on 72 has a certain grizzliness, as we see the bare bones of the now-skinned dead ass! "The Curé and the Dead Man" (VII 11) on 112 is unusually dramatic: are we seeing the casket drop out of the carriage onto the priest? I am not sure that I have ever seen the wolf's skin actually applied to the lion, as here, in "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox" (VIII 3) on 138. These are some of the easiest pages I have found for seeing watermarks. Unfortunately, a date does not seem to be part of the watermark here. T of C for this volume at the end. As with each of these volumes, the box is broken, but the portfolio cover remains intact.

1948 Fables Choisies Mises en Vers par M. de la Fontaine, Vol. III. Illustrated by François Chauveau. Printed in Paris. Paris: Les Bibliolatres de France: Les Minimes. $25 from Strand Rare Book Room, NY, Jan., '99.

See my comments on the first of the three volumes. This volume contains Books IX-XII. "The Mouse Changed into a Young Woman" (IX 7) on 26 does an unusually good job of joining all the serial elements into one picture. In TT (X 2) on 67, the flight path seems below tree-top level! The people could almost reach out and touch the turtle! This may be the first time that I have seen the old man using help to plant trees in "The Old Man and the Three Young Men" (XI 8) on 122. Again, the illustration for "The Matron of Ephesus" (XII 26) on 196 gets more into one picture than is usually possible. My method of reading has been to lift each single folded sheet of the printer's paper to read it, unfolding it to find what is inside. One realizes with this method of reading that La Fontaine's fables become longer as the books progress. Now seldom a fable finishes on one page of paper. T of C for this volume at the end, followed by an AI for the whole three volume work. As with each of these volumes, the box is broken, but the portfolio cover remains intact.

1948 Fables for Children. Irene Pearl. Illustrated by Jennetta Vise. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Great Britain. London: Geoffrey Cumberlege: Oxford University Press. $12.00 from Elaine's Books, Rocklin, CA, Sept., '98. Extra copy with two hand-colored illustrations for £4.40 from Ripping Yarns, London, May, '97.

These fifeen fables are unusual in filling out traditional fables. The author's note says of her childhood experience of well-known fables "The shrewd lessons they had to teach were often above my head, and I wanted to know much more about the Fox, the Cock, the Donkey and the others." Thus, as the flyleaf says, "the characters are allowed to linger, to talk of this and that, and show themselves in their true colours in a more leisurely way than they previously had time to do." Several of the stories here (including "The Dog, the Cat, and the Thieving Wolf"; "The Miser"; "The Travellers"; and "The Sailor and the Servant") are new fables created by the author. FG turns into a story of a shotgun death in a fox-pit dug beneath the fruit-bearing vine. The donkey ends up not starving but playing the cymbals in the animals' orchestra (20). FK is true to the traditional tale but adds new motivation for the original request for a king (21-22). CP becomes a story of camels and a well (25). The perplexed father is lucky: it rains at night, with sunshine in the morning, and so both of his daughters are happy. There are simple black-and-white designs for each fable.

1948 Favorite Stories. No artist or editor acknowledged. Racine: Whitman Publishing Company. See 1944/47/48.

1948 Frisky Fables, Vol. 4 No. 3. Printed in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Premium Service Company. $15.00 from Nerman's Books, Winnipeg, May, '98. 

As I feared, this comic book has nothing to do with fables. Its stories are all typical comic book stuff.

1948 I.A. Krylov: Basni. Edited by C. Telingatera. Illustrations by A. Laptyev. Hardbound. Moscow/Leningrad: Dietckij Literatury. $12.99 from Protek Trading Company, San Pedro, CA, and Sergiej Hvostov, Sumi, Ukraine, through eBay, June, '04. 

This book seems a standard presentation of Krylov's fables, with a rich assortment of Laptyev's 1947 illustrations. Might they perhaps have been done for this edition and then used extensively elsewhere? The T of C at the end lists seventy-eight fables on the book's 147 pages. The only illustrations are full-page black-and-white presentations, and I count twenty of them. Most represent well-known fables from either Krylov or La Fontaine, from "Quartet" and "The Monkey and the Spectacles" to WL and "The Elephant and the Cat." The book has an elaborate green cloth cover and spine with golden lettering.

1948 Jean de la Fontaine: Fables choisies mises en vers. Texte établi et présenté par Ferdinand Gohin. Tome I. Printed in Switzerland. Paris: Société les belles lettres. See 1934/48.

1948 Jean de la Fontaine: Fables choisies mises en vers. Texte établi et présenté par Ferdinand Gohin. Tome II. Printed in Switzerland. Paris: Société les belles lettres. See 1934/48.

1948 Jean de la Fontaine: Selected Fables. Translated by Eunice Clark. Illustrated by Alexander Calder. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: The Quadrangle Press. $40 at Old Forest Bookshop, Bethesda, Sept., '91. Extra copy with hurt spine a gift of Theresa Dethlefs from Estuary, Lincoln, Dec., '94.

At last a first edition of this lovely book. A beautiful book with a full or half-page illustration for each of its thirty-six fables, plus twelve vignettes. Good satirical verse, though sometimes with unusual vocabulary. Great for poetry reading sessions! Among the best-told fables is "The Eagle and the Owl" (38). The best illustrations are of the lion in love (19), the mountain's delivery (23), the man and the wooden idol (41), the fox and the mask (47), the two doctors (51), women and secrets (75), the bear and the two crooks (85), and the man and the flea (87). T of C at the beginning. I mentioned to Theresa, who spends time in Lincoln, that I had seen the copy in Estuary; a few days later it was under the tree waiting for me!

1948 The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls. Volume I: Fun and Thought for Little Folk. NY: Editorial bd of the University Society. See 1927/48.

1948 The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls. Volume II: Golden Stories and Fables. NY: Editorial board of the University Society. See 1927/48.

1948 The Golden Book of Nursery Tales. Edited by Elsa Jane Werner. Illustrated by Tibor Gergely. NY: Simon and Schuster. $12 from Corn Crib Antiques, Walnut, Iowa, Oct., '08.  Extra copies for $5 from Wisconsin State Fair antique show, West Allis, WI, August, '94, and for $9 at Front Street Antiques, Poulsbo, WA, July, '93.

Six fables in a large-format book whose spine has suffered in all three of my copies. Black-and-white smaller illustrations are combined with a few full-colored full-page illustrations. T of C at the beginning; the Poulsbo copy is missing one endpaper at each end, and its pages are separated from the covers. The State Fair copy was originally sold by Schuster's Book Shop in Milwaukee, the store in which my father worked for years! Fables here include: "The Dog and the Rooster" (48), TH (53), "The Monkey and the Crocodile" by Ellen Babbitt (115), TMCM (124, with nice colored illustrations), BC (126), and MSA (139). TMCM has the cat, the cook, and the dogs all invade together. MSA has a nice refain: "Why, I had not thought of that!" Occasional stars are pasted into the Schuster copy. There is some crayoning in the Poulsbo copy. See Nursery Tales (1948/57) for an unusual approach to re-editing.

1948 The New Junior Classics. Edited by Mabel Williams and Marcia Dalphin. Volume One: Fairy Tales and Fables. P.F. Collier and Son: No place given. See 1938/48/49.

1948 The Peacock Country. By P. Alston Waring. Decorated by Vera Bock. Hardbound. An Asia Book. Printed in USA. NY: The John Day Company, Inc. $10 from The Book House on Grand, St. Paul, Dec., '98.

This is a loving book of twenty-one short animal anecdotes from India. I have read the first eight. The common thread seems to be a form of pathetic fallacy, whereby the animals demonstrate feeling or activity we normally associate with humans. Thus in the first story a cobra has lived in a banyon tree on the property which a solitary man has cultivated. The cobra overhears the conversation indicating that the banyon will be cut down the following day. The farmer is very sorry to lose his tree and wonders what will become of the cobra. The next morning he finds the cobra cold and dead in front of the tree. In the second story, two elephants maneuver a dying elephant between them onto his legs and escort him to the shade, where he can lie down and die more comfortably. Each story is preceded by a very appealing black-and-white illustration, and there are also many simple monocolor line-designs along the way. There are five full-page illustrations: frontispiece, 15, 45, 63, and 86.

1948 Tierfabeln. Ausgewählt von Hans-Wilfried von Stockhausen. Mit Zeichnungen von Otto Berenbrock. One of 10,000. Hardbound. Donauwörth: Verlag Cassianeum. €35 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '06.

The final page shows that this book was published under license of the American Military Government. It also lists the thirty-one fables and their creators. Hey has four, and Gellert and Zacharia have two each. The author creates six himself, following each time on texts of others, like Aesop or Lessing. Each left-hand page has a text, and each right-hand page the corresponding full-page black-and-white drawing. I like Heinrich Seidel's "Der Zeisig" (14), Matthias Claudius' "Der Esel" (16), Christian Fürchtegott Gellert's "Die Junge Ente" (26), and Gottfried Lichtwer's "Der Affe und die Uhr" (40). The book is 7½" x 10" and has a grouping of various animals in white-on-black on its front cover. It is canvas-bound.

1948/50 From Long Ago and Many Lands. Stories for Children Told Anew. By Sophia L. Fahs. Illustrated by Cyrus LeRoy Baldridge. Second printing. Boston: The Beacon Press. $3.50 from Second Chance, Omaha, Sept., '95. Extra copy of the 1954 third printing in better shape for $5.60 from Eliot's Bookshop, Toronto, Jan., '94.

A so-so book including expanded versions of some four Jatakas tales, three Aesop's fables (SM, SW, and MSA, apparently fashioned after Jacobs), and several other fables from scripture and folklore. T of C at the beginning. The end features two unusual groupings: first by different situations and ways of living and then by kinds of characters. Simple illustrations. The introductory material identifies children of ages seven to nine as those who will enjoy these stories. The end-papers show a nice collection of scripts saying that we are all one family. The second printing has red page-edges at the top and a water-stain at the side.

1948/57 Jean de la Fontaine: Selected Fables. Translated by Eunice Clark. Illustrated by Alexander Calder. Dust jacket. NY: George Braziller, Inc. $25 from Landau Books, NY, May, '93. Extras for $40 at Brattle Book, June, '91 and, without dust jacket, for $24.95 from Renaissance, Summer, '91.

A new edition, without any acknowledgement of the Quadrangle Press original of 1948. Note that one extra copy cost me as much as the original eventually would cost. I see little change from the original here. This is a lovely book in whatever edition! See further comments under the original edition.

1948/57 Nursery Tales. A Golden Storytime Book. Edited by Elsa Jane Werner. Illustrated by Tibor Gergely. NY: Golden Press. $.60 somewhere, Jan., '88.

Index on 95. Two Aesop's fables receive one page each: "The Dog and the Rooster" (44) and TH (49). There are great colors in the (watercolor?) illustrations! This book makes a fascinating study when compared with the original The Golden Book of Nursery Tales (1948). Twelve stories are dropped, and apparently only "The Little Scarecrow Boy" is added. The artist went back and redid each of the illustrations in a new way for their color printing. The combination of dropping some stories and improving the paper makes for a much thinner book.

1948/68 Jean de la Fontaine: Selected Fables. Translated by Eunice Clark with forty-eight illustrations by Alexander Calder. Dover (NY) reprint of original 1948 edition by Braziller. $2 from Gryphon Bookshops in NY, May, '89. 4 extra copies.

Lively illustrations, probably not quite as good as those in the Aesop edition Calder did in 1931. I find nothing usable on a quick trip through, though the illustrations are well reproduced.

1948? Keur van Fabels van La Fontaine (I). Verlucht door Beatrice Mallet. No editor mentioned. Belgium: Chagor: S.I.R.E.C. $5 at Straat in Amsterdam, Dec., '88.

Middle-size format little kids' book. The illustrations tend to be very simple. FG on 22 may be the best. Two pages of text alternate with two pages of pictures.

1948? Keur van Fabels van La Fontaine (II). Verlucht door Beatrice Mallet. No editor mentioned. Rear cover identifies as Volume II. Belgium: Chagor: S.I.R.E.C. $5 at Straat in Amsterdam, Dec., '88.

Middle-size format little kids' book. The illustrations tend to be very simple. The two illustrations for FS on 14-15 may be the best. Two pages of text alternate with two pages of pictures.

1948? Reinaard de Vos. Piet Punt. Geillustreerd door Joost. Antwerpen: N.V. Ontspanningslectuur. Gift of Gert Jan van Dijk, Sept., '93.

Here is a verse beast epic putting together Reynard and the world of Holland soon after World War II. Notice the boxes marked in English "Dried Eggs" in the illustration on 30. There are other illustrations on 74 and 100, straight out of the Reynard tradition. Fourteen sections are indicated in the T of C on 103. Knowing more about this book will have to wait until my Dutch gets better!

1949 A Harvest of World Folk Tales. Edited by Milton Rugoff. With Illustrations and Decorations by Joseph Low. First printing. Dust jacket. NY: The Viking Press. $3.15 from Amitin, St. Louis, March, '96. Extra copy of the fourth printing ('55) for $8 from Dan Behnke, Chicago, Sept., '90.

Thirteen fables (415-21) in Thomas James' translations form the chief representive of the genre here. Low's woodcut-style drawings are delightful throughout, including the two for these Greek fables: DW and TB. There is also a section on Renard (304) and a generous sampling of stories of India. The latter include "Mouse-Maid Made Mouse" (443), "The Loyal Mungoose" (448), "The Brahman and the Pot of Rice" (450), and "The Mice That Ate Iron" (451).

1949 Aesop: Fabeln. Nach der lateinischen Überlieferung des Romulus übersetzt und herausgegeben von Bertold Hack. Mit Federzeichnungen von Josef Hegenbarth. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Hamburg: Dr. Ernst Hauswedell & Co. Verlag. DM 90 from Joachim Lührs, Hamburg, Sept., '99. Extra copy for $68.05 from Alibris, Dec., '02. 

This is a valuable little book. It had better be at the prices I paid for both copies! First, it presents a rare vernacular version of Romulus. There are eighty-six fables here on 92 pages, including an untitled last fable about the statue of Aesop. There is a T of C at the end. Secondly, this book features the the lovely work of Josef Hegenbarth. These whispy, evocative works are fine, and the book includes a number of them. Typical and good are those on the thief and the dog (26), the bald man and the flea (35), and the beaten ass (59). Hegenbarth takes a different view of LM here, putting the lion on his back (22). There is a "Nachwort" from the publisher. Hegenbarth's work is presented again in the 1966 Die Diebe und der Hahn. I will keep the extra copy in my little reference library.

1949 Aesop's Fables. Author Takeo Matsumura. Publisher Shin'nosuke Owari. Second edition. Tokyo: Dainippon Yuubenkai Kodansha. ¥1500 at Miwa, Kanda, July, '96.

This traditional Japanese book features a lion, rabbit, and stag on its Japanese front-cover. Inside it has close to eighty fables, with plenty of lively cartoons to accompany them. Notice, e.g., the fox and goat on the second and fourth pages and the two illustrations for TB on the sixth. These cartoons might almost remind us of images generated from rubber stamps. A favorite of mine is the donkey that would become a lapdog on 21 (Japanese numbering). Another is "King Log" on 49. I do not think I have ever before seen pictured the story of the man who vowed to give the gods a hundred cattle and then fulfilled the vow with wax images; the god here wears a halo. In the illustration for CW near the end of the book, the woman leaves not her bed but the dinner table. How nice to be able to recognize so many old friends so far from home! The spine is deterioriating on this book.

1949 Aesop's Fables. From the Translations of Thomas James and George Tyler [sic] Townsend. Introduction by Angelo Patri. Illustrated by Glen Rounds. Introduction by Angelo Patri. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. Philadelphia: The Lippincott Classics: J.B. Lippincott Company. $10 from Cummings in Dinkytown, Dec., '98. Extra copy in less good condition for $10 from Prince and the Pauper Collectible Children's Books, San Diego, Jan., '01.

I learned of this book somewhere very soon after I started collecting, and I put it on many of my first want lists, but never had the book in my hand, not even in libraries. Cummings' new store in Dinkytown seemed an unlikely place for a fable book, but I gave it a short try when I had the chance. The book almost fell off the shelf into my waiting hands! How wonderful to find it at last! There are 219 fables here. Notice that the title-page mistakes George Fyler Townsend's name, but this is not the first edition to do so. Perhaps they took the text from the David McKay edition that I have listed under "1885?/1910?" or from the Caldwell edition under "1885?/1900?" Rounds' work looks almost as though it were done with crayons or colored pencils. Among the best of his work I would cite "The Mice and the Weasels" (36-37), "The Dancing Camel" (97), WC (100; compare and contrast it with the dust jacket's version), and "The Ass and the Lap-Dog" (153). The typesetter makes the pages attractive by the use of cyan and magenta for initial words of stories. This is a very sturdy book. There is an AI at the front. Of course it would be fun to go through this book for a sense of when the author chooses James and when Townsend.

1949 Ausgewählte Fabeln von Iwan A. Krylow. Nachdichtung aus dem Russischen von Martin Remané. Illustriert von sowjetischen Künstlern. Paperbound. Berlin/Leipzig: Volk und Wissen Verlag. DM 8 from Richard Kulbach, Heidelberg, July, '02.

Here in a pamphlet of 28 pages are fifteen of Krylov's best loved fables in Remané's verse translations, which are elsewhere in this collection in editions of Krylov from SWA-Verlag in 1948 and from Aufbau-Verlag in 1952. All five of the illustrations done in cheaper fashion here can be found in better printings in the latter volume, with attribution of the specific artists, who are here only generic "sowjetische Künstler." The illustrations are "Der Spiegel und der Affe" (5) by W. Faworskij; "Eremit und Bär" (9) by W. Bajuskin; "Der Kuckuck und der Hahn" (17) by F. Domogazkij; "Der Kater und der Koch" (21) by W. Milaschewskij; and "Schwan, Hecht und Krebs" (24) by G. Jetscheïstow.

1949 Childcraft in Fourteen Volumes. Volume 3: Folk and Fairy Tales. Chicago: Field Enterprises. $1 at Oshkosh in June, '88.

Eleven fables at the end of the book. Seven versions are holdovers from the 1931/47 Childcraft edition and thus come from Jacobs; the four that are new come from Aesop's Fables (1944), edited by Elizabeth Stones. Thus FG, FC, GA, and "The Cat, the Monkey, and the Chestnuts" are dropped from 1931/47; they are replaced by MSA, DS, MM, and GGE here. The illustrations are entirely new. Many of them are signed "H.P." Compare also with the Childcraft edition of 1964.

1949 Children's Stories To Read or Tell. For Pleasure and Understanding. Compiled by Alice Isabel Hazeltine. Dust jacket, torn. NY: Abingdon Press. $2 at Pageturner's, Omaha, Dec., '92.

Fables make up one of five sections of this book, and the section is aptly named "Merry and Wise: Stories of Ancient Wisdom." There are six Aesopic fables, at least the first five of which are in Joseph Jacobs' classic versions. Two Jatakas tales follow, and then the story of the hare's belief that the world is ending. There is some simple design work along the way, and a nice black-and-white composite of all the fables on 33. The foreword starts with this fine quotation from Henry van Dyke: "Let me never tag a moral to a story, nor tell a story without a meaning" (5).

1949 Das Fabelbuch. Herausgegeben von Heinrich A. Mertens. Holzstiche von Daniel Traub. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Heidelberg/Waibstadt: Verlag Kemper. $3.50 at Kulbach, Heidelberg: Aug., '88. Extra copy for DM 28 from Versand Antiquariat, Wörthsee, Germany, Nov., '00. 

Here is an early post-war product of Germany in Gothic script. The bibliographical information on the back of the title-page indicates that it was done in a US zone. The book has a charming approach to its subject. First comes a section "Fabeln und Belehrende Märlein für Grosse Nachdenkliche Leute." Who can pass up an invitation like that? The very next element, graced with one of many small, pleasing woodcuts, is "Statt eines Vorwortes." It is in fact Luther's fable of the rooster and pearl, used often earlier to introduce fable books as precious pearls. "This fable teaches that this book will be worthless with crass people, who disdain art and wisdom." The selection of adult material over the next 240 pages is broad. I cannot yet find an organizing principle. The forty-five authors cited include Andersen, Bierce, LaFontaine, and Marie de France but otherwise exclusively German authors. The bibliography is also disappointing, since it mentions only titles and no dates, places, or publishers. After the section for adults, there is a much shorter section (249-76) devoted to "Reimgeschichten und Märchen für Kleine Leute." Hey and Güll are the predominant authors here. A good example of the woodcuts is "Der Teufel und der Dieb" (217). From what I can gather, this book may be rather scarce. I do not think that I have seen reference to it.

1949 Fables de Florian. Illustrations d' Armand Rapeño. Hardbound. No place mentioned: Editions Albin Michel. $9.95 from Charles Stewart, Middletown, Delaware, through eBay, June, '05. 

This is a large-format (about 9" x 12") book of fables with several unusual points. The first is the dust jacket folded over the cover in overlapping sections and then pasted together to remain permanently in place. There are fifteen fables here, each receiving a title and text on the left-hand page and on the right a full-page illustration without border signed by Armand Rapeño. These are large, colorful, dramatic. Among the best are "L'Enfant et le Miroir"; "L'Aveugle et le Paralytique"; "Le Singe qui Montre la Lanterne Magique" (this fable receives a total of four pages); and "Le Dancer de Corde et le Balancier." The paper of this book is unusually substantial. The book was originally sold by the Librairie du Lycée in Bordeaux.

1949 Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Raoul Auger. Hardbound. Paris: Bibliothéque Rouge et Or, Souveraine: Editions G.P.. $5 from Amanda MacDonald, West Bridgewater, MA, through eBay, Nov., '02. 

Here I have worked my way back to an apparent first edition of Bodemann 466.1. The special feature of this book of one hundred and five fables is the full-page photolithographs by Auger. I find sixteen in all, including a good frontispiece (5) of La Fontaine and the animals and a good last page of GGE (192). Three others strike me as very good: TT (13); "Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin" (121); and "Le Vieillard & ses Enfants" (185). I find the style typical of 50's art: Disneyesque, spirited, sentimental, and colorful. There is a touch of Dufy here. Bodemann, who seems to find only fifteen full-page colored illustrations, is not as positive as I am about this art. Let me quote some of Bodemann's assessment: "Die ganzseitigen Darstellungen bilderbuchhaft: Protagonisten meist in voller Bildhoehe mit ein oder zwei detailliert beschriebenen, groesseren Gegenstaenden als Kulissen in Szenen mit zirkusaehnlicher Wirkung; Tiere mit uebertrieben-schelmischer, naiver Mimik in Bewegungsmomenten (Lauf, Sprung o. ae.), Menschen ueberdimensional schmal oder breit, mit nervoeser Mimik und Gestik und emotionsbestimmter Haltung." The covers of this book are leatherlike red cloth with an embossed black design imprinted on the front cover. See my later printing of this work under 1949/1962.

1949 Fables de la Fontaine. Présentées par Jean de la Varende. Illustrées par Félix Lorioux. Cloth spine. Dust jacket. Printed in Nantes. Paris: Marcus. $60 from John Baxter, Paris, April, '04. Extra copy in poor condition for $9.99 from the Kershen Furniture Company, NY, through eBay, Jan., '00. 

What a lucky find! This is the original that stands--more or less--behind two later books of fables I have found containing illustrations by Lorioux. By "later" I mean to distinguish this whole set of work from his earlier 1921 Hachette edition. His style has here, almost thirty years later, become more fascinated with the small, the delicate, and the quaint. These two later derivative editions both have the title "Fables de la Fontaine" and were done by Marcus in 1958 and the Imprimerie Moderne in Nantes in 1960. I add "more or less" above because three fables included in the 1960 book do not appear in this 1949 edition: "Le Coq & le Renard," "Le Coche et la Mouche," and DW. One illustration that appears there is reversed: TH. That book takes the lovely small colored designs from this 1949 edition and makes them into small black-and-white illustrations. This book, then, contains fifteen fables. Among the prize-winning illustrations, I would say, are WL and FS. The woman holding the oversized frying pan for the sizzling little fish on 36 is a good example of Lorioux' style in this work. Also remarkable is the hen on 41 who is being simultaneously choked, plucked, and gutted! There is frequently a small chorus of ladybugs watching a fable's central scene. According to the notice facing the title-page, this is a copy of the "Édition Enfantine" and not of the "Édition de Luxe," which was limited to 1000 copies. There is still what looks like a signature of "La Varende" following the preface The good copy is in excellent condition.

1949 Fables de La Fontaine. Suivies d'un choix de fables tirées des meilleurs fabulistes français. Édition classique. Par M. l'Abbé O. Meurisse. Thirty-fifth edition. Paris: J. De Gigord. See 1874/1949.

1949 Fables et Épitres de la Fontaine. Introduction by Émile Faguet. Hardbound. Printed in Great Britain. Paris: Nelson Éditeurs. $10.00 from Berkeley Book Co., Berkeley, CA, Oct., '98.

Perhaps the main advantage of this little (just over 6" x 4") book is that it is a handy, flexible volume containing apparently all of La Fontaine's fables. The letters get only some 76 pages to the 380, plus introductory material, for the fables. There is an alphabetical index at the front of the book, as well as a black-and-white frontispiece of Aesop and the animals before the statue of La Fontaine.

1949 Fifty Forensic Fables. By O (Theo Mathew). Selected from the "Forensic Fable" series in Law Journal of 1926-9. Dust jacket. London: Butterworth & Co. $5 at Sebastopol Antiques, Dec., '96. Extra copy with slightly damaged dust jacket for $2 at Pageturners, April, '91.

This book does for the legal profession in England what George Ade's fables do more broadly. These are enjoyable tales with pleasing caricatures. All the actors are humans. A funny appendix follows "The Story of an Ancient Line" through twelve generations. The book shows what "fable" meant earlier in this century.

1949 Giant Playbook. For Boys and Girls from 7 to 11. By Jeff E. Thompson and Annie Blaine. NY: Hart Publishing Company. $5 at Finders Keepers, Omaha, Oct., '89.

An engaging book in very good shape for its age and kind. AL is on 172. Some games are pencilled in, and pages 39-40 are missing. The two illustrations for this one fable remind me of others in cheap-paper editions, but a rapid check has not revealed any that are identical.

1949 Good Night Stories. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Chicago: Merrill Company. $3.40 from Aamstar, Colorado Springs, March, '94.

A large-format pamphlet in poor condition containing six stories, all found in Tuck-in Tales (1946) and in the same size. Many are also in Picture Story (1950) in a smaller format with different versions. Among them is "Tommy Turtle," a faithful version of Kalila & Dimna's TT story. Tommy wears a big hat with a feather and says "Yoo hoo" unprovoked when he sees some children he knows in Tucker Town. Merrill got good mileage out of this story! Some of the sections of this book's cover are fuzzy.

1949 Iwan Krylow: Russische Fabeln. Übersetzer: Ferdinand Löwe. Illustrationen von Herbert Pridöhl. First edition. Hardbound. Baden-Baden: Die Reihe Klassischer Jugendbücher: Kairos-Verlag. €6 from Antiquariat Hauser, Munich, August, '07.

Here is a West German book that appeared soon after World War II. The drawings by Pridöhl are particularly good, I think. They appear with some eleven of the sixty-one fables translated here. Among the best of them, I believe, are WL (23); "Der Wissbegierige" (33); "Der Stein und der Wurm" (47); and "Der Bauer und Sein Knecht" (61). Canvas spine. Löwe's translation evidently was published first in 1874 by Brockhaus in Leipzig.

1949 La Fontaine den Masallar. Translated by Ahmet Oguz Saruhan. Paperbound. Istanbul: Cocuk Kitaplari Serisi #42: Ahmet Halit Kitabevi. $5 from Ugur Yurtuttan, Istanbul, Turkey, Feb., '05.

Here are 116 pages of verse translations of La Fontaine into Turkish with thirty pictures. There is a T of C at the end. The book starts with a colorful cover picture of La Fontaine speaking with children in contemporary dress, with animals around the periphery of their conversation. The texts are punctuated from time to time with not very precise illustrations, many of them taken from Weir. I also notice several from Grandville.

1949 La Fontaine Stories Translated into Armenian (translated title). Booklet. Printed in Istanbul: Aprahamyan Basimevi. $10 from Rifat Behar, Istanbul, Turkey, through Ebay, Dec., '10.

This pamphlet contains perhaps eight small illustrations. Let me say something about them. The frontispiece is a standard bust of La Fontaine. On 25, are those figures Baucis and Philemon? Might the illustration on 35 be LS? The illustration on 38 seems to be "The Fly and the Coach." The illustration on 40 suggests "The Companions of Ulysses." After some of these early exemplars, there are few illustrations. I find further illustrations on 49, 65, and 80 (2W). The T of C on 174-75 lists fifty-three stories. Now this is an out-of-the-way book for the collection! I am delighted to have found it.

1949 The Aesop for Children. Pictures by Milo Winter. No editor named. Eau Claire: E.M. Hale and Company. See 1919/47/49.

1949 The eagle & the fox & the fox and the eagle: two semantically symmetrical versions followed by a revised application. Text after the translation of Samuel Croxall, 1722. Drawings by Franciszka Themerson. #148 of 400, signed by the artist. Paperbound. Printed in London. London: Gaberbocchus Press Limited. $650 from Princeton Antiques, Atlantic City, NJ, Feb., '02.

This wild and wonderful presentation had been on my want list since I saw it in the Heffelfinger Collection in Minneapolis. Princeton Antiques' notice to me was the first time I had heard that it was available. Though the price was very steep, I tried to follow my collector's rule that one should buy immediately what one has not had the chance to buy before. The whimsy in this book begins on the cover which shows a fox's head separated like a doll from an attractive human female body, while next to it is stamped an outline of the eagle's body. There are already strange things happening! After the pre-title-page's image of hunchbacked Aesop crawling across the page like an animal, we find the title-page's presentation of the title along with each line's mirror image one line lower. The effect is perfect: a reader asks "What is this?" There follows Croxall's standard version, introduced as "appealing for our sympathy with the vixen." Version 2 follows: "Our description of the cruelty of the fox, appealing for your sympathy with the eagle." This second version reverses the aggressor and victim relationships exactly, changing only the tree's nest for an underground burrow. The application: "These two fables are a warning to us not to deal hardly or injuriously by somebody who can defend himself by dealing hardly or injuriously by us. There ar many less subtle and imperious creatures which we can eat in peace, and to the Glory of God." Do not miss "Contents" just after the application; it continues the fun.

1949 The How and Why Program: Hero Unit. Edited by George W. Diemer; Contributing Editor Claude Merton Wise. Various illustrators. Cleveland: L. J. Bullard Co. See 1930/39/49/56.

1949 The How and Why Program: Story Unit. Edited by George W. Diemer; Contributing Editor Claude Merton Wise. Various illustrators. Cleveland: L. J. Bullard Co. See 1930/39/49/56.

1949 The New Junior Classics. Edited by Mabel Williams and Marcia Dalphin. Volume One: Fairy Tales and Fables. P.F. Collier and Son: No place given. See 1938/48/49.

1949 The Scandalous Adventures of Reynard the Fox. A Modern American Version by Harry J. Owens. Illustrations by Keith Ward. Limited edition of 375. Inscribed by the author. Chicago: The Holiday Press. $20 at Bluestem, Lincoln, Dec., '93.

A lively and very readable version of the legends, particularly rich in fable material. Topical headings in red in the margin help the reader along within each chapter. Lively and plentiful monochrome illustrations. An excellent and successful cooperative effort among many artists and craftspersons.

1949/1956? Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Raoul Auger. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Paris: Bibliothéque Rouge et Or, Souveraine: Editions G.P. $7.99 from Matthew Elliott, Fairfield, VA, through eBay, March, '04. 

This book seems intermediate between my 1949 and 1962 versions. Its 1956 date comes from the dust jacket, lacking in either of the other two copies. It adds a crown design saying "Bibliothèque rouge et or Souveraine" on the title-page. Let me repeat my comments from those listings. Bodemann 466.1. The special feature of this book of one hundred and five fables is the full-page photolithographs by Auger. I find sixteen in all, including a good frontispiece (5) of La Fontaine and the animals and a good last page of GGE (192). Three others strike me as very good: TT (13); "Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin" (121); and "Le Vieillard & ses Enfants" (185). I find the style typical of 50's art: Disneyesque, spirited, sentimental, and colorful. There is a touch of Dufy here. Bodemann, who seems to find only fifteen full-page colored illustrations, is not as positive as I am about this art. Let me quote some of Bodemann's assessment: "Die ganzseitigen Darstellungen bilderbuchhaft: Protagonisten meist in voller Bildhoehe mit ein oder zwei detailliert beschriebenen, groesseren Gegenstaenden als Kulissen in Szenen mit zirkusaehnlicher Wirkung; Tiere mit uebertrieben-schelmischer, naiver Mimik in Bewegungsmomenten (Lauf, Sprung o. ae.), Menschen ueberdimensional schmal oder breit, mit nervoeser Mimik und Gestik und emotionsbestimmter Haltung."

1949/61 Childcraft in Fifteen Volumes. Volume 3: Folk and Fairy Tales. ©1960 by Field Enterprises Educational Corporation. Chicago: Field Enterprises. $2.95 at Renaissance in Palo Alto, Aug., '94.

One finds here the same eleven fables and the same illustrations as in the 1949 Childcraft edition. See my comments there. The covers and endpapers have changed. Compare also with the Childcraft editions of 1931/47. Note that the series has grown by one book since 1949.

1949/62 Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Raoul Auger. Hardbound. Printed in France. Paris: Bibliothéque Rouge et Or, Série "Souveraine": Editions G.P. $24 from Alibris, Feb., '00.

Bodemann 466.1. The special feature of this book of one hundred and five fables is the full-page photolithographs by Auger. I find sixteen in all, including a good frontispiece (5) of La Fontaine and the animals and a good last page of GGE (192). Three others strike me as very good: TT (13); "Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin" (121); and "Le Vieillard & ses Enfants" (185). I find the style typical of 50's art: Disneyesque, spirited, sentimental, and colorful. There is a touch of Dufy here. Bodemann, who seems to find only fifteen full-page colored illustrations, is not as positive as I am about this art. Let me quote some of Bodemann's assessment: "Die ganzseitigen Darstellungen bilderbuchhaft: Protagonisten meist in voller Bildhöhe mit ein oder zwei detailliert beschriebenen, grösseren Gegenständen als Kulissen in Szenen mit zirkusähnlicher Wirkung; Tiere mit übertrieben-schelmischer, naiver Mimik in Bewegungsmomenten (Lauf, Sprung o. ä.), Menschen ueberdimensional schmal oder breit, mit nervöser Mimik und Gestik und emotionsbestimmter Haltung."

1949/62? Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations de Raoul Auger. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Paris: Bibliothéque Rouge et Or, Souveraine: Editions G.P. $9 from Stéphane Cohen, Asnieres, France, through eBay, April, '03. 

This book is the fourth distinct version I have found. It has the internal features of the book I have listed under "1949/1956?" but it has a different dust-jacket. The dust jacket here includes references to new publications in 1962 but does not have the same data on the colored colophon page at the end as the 1962 printing has. My suspicion is that the publisher first filled his new dust jackets with leftover stock of the old printings, and then turned later in 1962 to newly printed books. As I write in those other places, this is Bodemann 466.1. The special feature of this book of one hundred and five fables is the full-page photolithographs by Auger. I find sixteen in all, including a good frontispiece (5) of La Fontaine and the animals and a good last page of GGE (192). Three others strike me as very good: TT (13); "Le Chat, la Belette et le petit Lapin" (121); and "Le Vieillard & ses Enfants" (185). I find the style typical of 50's art: Disneyesque, spirited, sentimental, and colorful. There is a touch of Dufy here. Bodemann, who seems to find only fifteen full-page colored illustrations, is not as positive as I am about this art. Let me quote some of Bodemann's assessment: "Die ganzseitigen Darstellungen bilderbuchhaft: Protagonisten meist in voller Bildhoehe mit ein oder zwei detailliert beschriebenen, groesseren Gegenstaenden als Kulissen in Szenen mit zirkusaehnlicher Wirkung; Tiere mit uebertrieben-schelmischer, naiver Mimik in Bewegungsmomenten (Lauf, Sprung o. ae.), Menschen ueberdimensional schmal oder breit, mit nervoeser Mimik und Gestik und emotionsbestimmter Haltung."

1949/85 Talking Animals. By Wilfrid Dyson Hambly. Illustrated by James A. Porter. Paperbound. Washington, DC: The Associated Publishers, Inc.. $12 from Binc Books, Oklahoma City, OK, through abe, Nov., '02. 

This hundred-page book was originally published in 1949 and then reprinted in 1985. Hambly brought back from West Africa many objects for the Field Museum in Chicago. He published some of the stories he heard there, but he also enjoyed telling the stories to children who came to the museum. This is the book of those stories; they seem a standard collection of African tales. A number of them are aetiological. Thus the antelope encounters seven different tortoises at different points along his straight seven-hundred-yard path. This story does not have the usual "double-back" feature of the standard Aesopic race between hare and hedgehog. Dejected at the end, the antelope tries to commit suicide by putting his head into the fork of a tree. When a leopard growls, he starts and thus elongates his neck (11), One whole section is about the mutual attempts of tortoise and hare to trick each other. Tortoise seems to be the regular winner. I find "Tortoise Loved a Girl" (37) a touching story. Tortoise alone was kind to her and so received her in marriage. Another touching story is that of the abused lioness who finally beats and takes her son away from her husband while he has a pot stuck around his head (78). Hambly's introductions to the sections sound politically incorrect now after fifty-five years, as when the introduction to "Boys and Birds" (43) contains this statement: "I am afraid that boys often rob the nests of birds, but we must remember that Negro boys have some excuse for this since they have to use every kind of food available, and the eggs are appetizing." I find the stories to be expanded fables; they are about two full pages each in length. The expansion lies in details of color and history behind the story. The expansion serves especially to create a character out of the animal involved.

1949/87 The Panchatantra. Translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder. Paperback. Printed in Bombay. Bombay: Jaico Publishing House. $10 from Krakus Books, Vancouver BC, Canada by mail, March, '01.

See my comments on Ryder's original work in 1925/26. See my comments there. This inexpensive paperback features covers that went onto the book upside-down and backwards. It has the familiar Ryder features, including the convenient T of C according to fables. The last version I read (Olivelle, 1997), did not have the great reference in the first few pages to Vishnusharman's offer that, should he fail, the king could show him "His Majestic bare bottom" (12)!

1949? Deutsche Fabeln. Auswahl und Bearbeitung von Willy Schüssler. Zeichnungen von Grothe. Paperbound. Naumburg-Saale: UTA-Jugendbücher Band 1: UTA-Verlag. DM 5 from Zentralantiquariat, Leipzig, July, '96. 

Here is a large, deteriorating book of German fables done not too long after World War II. As the beginning T of C shows, the fables are organized by subjects. Thus the Tierfabeln, after 54 pages of Reineke Fuchs, move to some eleven fables on lions, add then fifteen on the fox, and move on thus through five more animal groups. There are then three other major categories: plants; nature and humans; and wise people and fools. The illustrations occur especially to mark the beginnings of sections. This book looks a bit as though it had gone through a war itself! Its cardboard covers have done well to hold out as long as they have. I take it that the book gives us a sense of East German productivity soon after the war. Inscribed at Christmas, 1949.

1949? My First Book of Fables. Illustrated by Arthur Mansbridge. Canvas spine. London/Glasgow: The Children's Press. $9.99 from Susan Dunn, St Clair, Dunedin, New Zealand, June, '00. Extra copy for £6.75 at Ripping Yarns, London, May, '97.

I had thought this book was identical internally with the book of the same title published by Collins (1950?). See my comments there. There are actually many differences. This book adds four fables for a total of fourteen. In LM, the mouse does not run over or otherwise disturb the lion. In DLS, the fox in the illustration pulls the lion's skin off by the tail! Also new here are BW and DS. This book has different covers (the same front and back) and endpapers (also identical with each other). Both the covers and the endpapers include illustrations of the horse and the ass and of the eagle and the tortoise. Neither of these stories appears in this book! (No wonder Collins changed the cover and dropped the endpapers.) Similarly, the endpapers show a fox and a lion together, and that fable does not appear here. This book drops the borders around the pages. Many of the illustrations are not well calibrated in the Ripping Yarns copy; they are quite fuzzy. In the much better Dunn copy, the third page of MSA is similarly fuzzy. Since that is one of the few that comes out well in the Ripping Yarns copy, I will keep both in the collection. The Ripping Yarns copy is inscribed at Christmas, 1949.

1949? My First Book of Fables. Illustrated by Arthur Mansbridge. Hardbound. London/Glasgow: Collins. £3.5 from Abbey Antiquarian, August, '00.

This book has some features of each of two other books that are very similar: The Children's Press version of the book by the same title under "1949?" and the Collins edition listed under "1950?". The cover of this edition is unique: the young man is reaching over the fence to get a golden egg. This book then follows the edition from The Children's Press. It thus does not follow the practice of the Collins version of putting a colored border around each page. The fables included are, with one addition (LM), the same as in the Collins version. The Children's Press version adds several fables near the end that are in neither of the Collins versions, namely this edition and that under "1950?" Those additions include BW, DS, and DLS. The illustrations are relatively well done; the colors are not as fuzzy as they sometimes are in the various printings of Mansbridge's work. This edition adds a final unique feature when it fills an empty space on the back end-papers with four stanzas reviewing the stories. Curiously enough, this poem includes mention of two of the three stories excluded in this edition! It presents this pointed admonition: "You have laughed at the stories. Now read them again./And, this time, no skipping the tags at the end!/You must ponder The Moral, The Moral, my friend!"

1949?/60? Deutsche Fabeln. Auswahl und Bearbeitung von Willy Schüssler. Zeichnungen von Grothe. Hardbound. Naumburg-Saale: UTA-Jugendbücher Band 1: UTA-Verlag. €8 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '06.

This book is identical with a presumably earlier printing, which I have listed under "1949?" The changes are to the cover, binding, and perhaps paper. I find no indication of date of publication and so I guess at 1960. The front cover now presents a pleasing picture of a troubador with a scurrying rabbit, a book, and some free pages on the ground before him. A banner behind him presents the frog, the sun, a flower, and a monkey with a mirror. Firm boards now replace the earlier cardboard of the covers. The binding is now firm canvas. I believe that the paper is also firmer; the impression of the illustrations seems clearer. Let me repeat what I wrote of the earlier copy. As the beginning T of C shows, the fables are organized by subjects. Thus the Tierfabeln, after 54 pages of Reineke Fuchs, move to some eleven fables on lions, add then fifteen on the fox, and move on thus through five more animal groups. There are then three other major categories: plants; nature and humans; and wise people and fools. The illustrations occur especially to mark the beginnings of sections.