The Fables of Aesop

This is a collection of short animal fables transmitted under the name of Aesop, a storyteller of ancient Greece. Typical pieces put fox, crow, wolf, lamb, or ass into a brief encounter that ends in a reversal and a stated moral about pride, trust, or appetite. Some fables use human types - the shepherd, the farmer, the traveler - in the same compressed form. There is no continuous plot; the book is a store of independent tales meant for teaching and retelling. It is folklore in prose or verse, not a novel and not a natural history of the animals named.

Bound in light brown cloth cover blocked in red and black with Detmold's original design redrawn by David Eccles. Frontispiece and 22 colour plates and 16 black & white integrated illustrations. Coloured page tops. Plain slipcase.