CU Test Comunity

Permanent URI for this community

http://hdl.handle.net/10673/2034

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 38

Aesop's Fables, new versified, from the best English editions in three parts
(Robert Peck, 1803) Gent, H. Steers,
I quote an online description: "Despite the impression given by the title page that this is merely a verse translation from the English of Aesop's Fables there is in fact a large element of original verse. The volume starts with a verse dedication to the Earl of Carlisle, mentioning his embassy to America. Each of the early fables is preceded by a verse addressed to a contemporary figure, for example Thomas Grimston, William Eddis, John Blades, Francis Const, Philip Leslie, Edward Topham, R. B. Sheridan, Charles James Fox etc. This address is usually extensive and sometimes longer the actual Fable itself." Where this quotation writes "addressed," I wonder if the better expression might be "dedicated." This edition is known online but seems quite rare. This copy lacks 209-218, the last two-and-a-half fables. There is a T of C at the beginning. The first part, 41 fables, seem all to have dedicatees. The second part, #42-100, lack them. The fulsome praise of the dedicatees and the "poetic" elaboration of the fables is not our taste today. I am however delighted to have found this unusual fable creation from a bygone era. The title-page continues: "sold by J. Harris, (successor to E. Newbery,) corner of St. Paul's Church-Yard; and E. Williams, No II, Strand, London; also by Rawson and Rodford, Lowgate, Hull; M. Turner, Beverley; J. Etherington, Driffield; G. Sagg, Malton; Turner and Ainsworth, Scarborough; W. A. Henderson, Durham; J. Wolstenholme, Minster-Yard, York; T. Binns, Leeds; W. Sheardown, Dorchester; and all the principal booksellers."
Fables de La Fontaine
(Librairie Ancienne et Moderne, 1827) Jean de La Fontaine
This thick little volume (4" x 2½" x 1½" thick) has to be one of the most compact volumes in the collection. To my surprise, it is really an "Oeuvres de La Fontaine," and I wonder if a title-page to that effect might have been lost at the book's beginning. It is there before the other three volumes bound together here. The book thus contains not only all twelve books of fables in two stated volumes separately paginated (181 and 222 pages, respectively) but also two volumes of the Contes (152 and 184 pages, respectively). There is a T of C at the beginning of each of the four volumes. No illustrations.
Fables de Lafontaine: Imagerie d'Épinal
(Pellerin & Companie, 1850) Épinal
We have a copy of very similar pamphlet, but several things are different. Might it be that this new copy is a yet more original version? This cover includes red fill just inside the narrow frame around the illustration. It lacks the "6me Série" on the top. Though it is hard to make out, it has a different label at the bottom of the front cover. The obscuring factor is a dealer's seal from P. Rolandi in London. The back cover removes the "Pellerin & Cie-Imps-Edits" at the bottom and again fills this space with red. The empty space at the center of the back cover it includes a rather long "En Vente" advertisement mentioning four La Fontaine numbers and other publications. Internally this copy has a "Fables de La Fontaine" at the top of the first page and many other pages, which is lacking on the first page of the other copy. The typesetting of the first page is also different. The colored illustrations are brighter than in the other copy. The cape of the wolf who has become a shepherd has stripes that were not differentially colored in the other version. The fox visiting the sick lion has exchanged the colors of the two parts of his lower covering. The color scheme of the leggings of the left-hand man in OR has changed. If I were looking for evidence that these beautiful illustrations are hand-colored, I guess I just received it! The seven illustrations here include "Les Deux Mulets," OF, TH, "Le Corbeau Voulant Imiter l'Aigle," and the three mentioned. There is a lovely redoing of "Le Corbeau Voulant Imiter l'Aigle" on the front cover. This pamphlet, like the other, adds one pictureless fable before (DLS) and one after (BF) the seven illustrated fables. 7¼" x 10". This copy cost less than 10% of the other copy!
Fables de La Fontaine en Vers Provençaux
(Alexandre Gueidon, 1872) Marius Bourrelly, translator, Jean de La Fontaine
Here is a lucky find in fragile condition. Inside this volume covering the first six books is a publisher's promise of a second volume. At its end, after a T of C, there is a list of subscribers. I tried the Provençal. It is far enough from the French for me to find it difficult. This volume includes a photograph of Bourrelly. I am grateful that Biblio routinely chooses several bookdealers who offer a sizeable month-long discount.
Selections from Aesop's Fables (Cover: Aesop's Fables)
(D. Lothrop, 1884) Bates, Clara Doty; Garrett, Lungren, Hassam, Barnes, Sweeney
Here is a curious find with ties to four books already in the collection. It is closest to the copy from Old Children's Books in New Orleans in June, '87. The only difference here lies in the red cloth cover with the title placed before a half sunburst, a panel highlighting TH, images for LM, and acknowledgement of author and artists. Internally, the books are identical. The next closest comes from Bookhouse, Arlington Oct., '91, which is different on both sides of the title-page. Two further cousins have identical content after the first few pages but have a different title, "Select Fables" on their front covers. As I wrote of the Old Children's Books version, one finds here prose versions followed by Bates' long poetic versions surrounded with art. The best illustrations are of FS and FK. This version has the same error in the title of the prose version: "The Lark and the Farmer" should have a plural for the bird. The spine is become detached from the block of this book.
Fables de La Fontaine: Édition Illustrée
(Librairie Garnier Frères, 1898) Jean de La Fontaine; avec des notes et précédée de la vie de l'auteur par Auger; de 250 dessins par J.-J. Grandville
The chief claim of this 4½" x 7" edition of La Fontaine with Grandville's illustrations is the brilliant gold-embossed red cover of the wolf and fox pleading before the monkey. Otherwise it is another reproduction sixty years later of Grandville's lovely work. 478 pages. T of C at the end.
Palmer Cox's Funny Animals
(M.A. Donohue and Company, 1903) Cox, Palmer; Cox, Palmer
I am glad to have an excuse for including among our fable editions a second Palmer Cox book. It is in poor condition, and the printing is particularly poor in places. Within its board covers are twelve verse stories for children of extremely varied subject matter. Three might well be considered fables. "The Elephant and Donkey" has the two on a narrow bridge. The elephant expresses his presumed right to go first, and the donkey disagrees – and then finds himself thrown up into a tree, where one can still see his bones hanging! "The Turkey in Danger" is a replay of the Chanticleer story. An older fox with a trapped turkey in a basket is schooling a younger fox along the way. As she goes over a fence, the basket is upset, and a wild chase ensues. That Turkey will never let itself be surprised again! "The Ostrich and the Man" has the ostrich finding a creative way of overcoming the man: plopping down on him in the desert! As in his other book in our collection, Cox excels in lively grotesqueries. The cheap paper and time have worked together to make the impressions of many of the engravings blotted. Unpaginated.
Broderies & Ouvrages de Dames, Les Fables de La Fontaine, Album #4
(Broderies & Ouvrages de Dames, 1920)
Here is a curious addition to the collection: an oversized (10½" x 14¼") paperback pamphlet of 32 pages offering full-sized patterns for embroidered representations of 32 La Fontaine fables. The designs are not complex. The paper is fragile, but the pamphlet is surprisingly well preserved. The cover shows a reflective milkmaid looking down on spilt milk. This is our third acquisition from Mexico. The first two came during a personal visit to Juarez. I could not find this journal on the web, but it did lead me to find an embroiderer's image for FC from the same era!
The Book of the Bear: Being Twenty-one Tales newly translated from the Russian
(The Nonesuch Press, 1926) Harrison, Jane; Mirrlees, Hope; Garnett, Ray
This little (4" x 6¼") book offers delightful illustrations to various traditional Russian stories, including several fables. I watch for the attributions in the beginning T of C and find those stories attributed to Krylov, like "The Bear's Dinner Party" (30), where Mishka dances like a drunken fool and is praised by the fox. When the wolf queries the fox, she answers something like "It makes him happy and gets us a dinner invitation!" Other Krylov fables are "The Hermit and the Bear" (50) and "The Bear and the Bees" (75). For fable-lovers, there are also "The Industrious Bear" (56) and "The Two Friends" (61). The three-color illustrations are well done. Do not miss the epilogue "To Bad Children" on 108!
Fables de la Fontaine
(Maison Alfred Mame et Fils, 1931) Jean de La Fontaine; R. de la Nézière
This is our fifth Nézière version of La Fontaine and one of the most interesting. Here is the history as I believe we can reconstruct it. Mame published a fine Nézière edition in 1926. It was slightly larger than this present edition, which is almost 8" x 11". It contained 60 fables on its 159 pages. It combined 16 strong full-page colored illustrations with two smaller black-and-white illustrations for every fable except one, MM. The match between the colored and black-and-white illustrations was particularly good. Front and back covers also had full-page illustrations of arches with the poet on stage on the front cover and anthropomorphized animal characters in the foreground; on the back cover, another set of anthropomorphized animal characters was in the foreground. I praised this book for its extravagant imagination. This edition was apparently exactly reprinted in 1930 in our second copy. Our third copy is an inexpensive Dutch paperback from 1979, but it coincides with the present book in presenting internally only black-and-white versions of Nézière's original illustrations. It presents only 35 fables and eliminates entirely the full-page illustrations. The fourth book is a 2001 Everyman's Library edition that reproduces both the smaller black-and-white illustrations of 1926 and the 16 full-page colored illustrations. Now I have found this 1931 edition, whose 160 pages render the full-page illustrations in black-and-white and are selective in the smaller illustrations that are included. There are significant stretches of fables toward the end with no illustration at all. Might this version be a cheaper post-stock-market-crash version? Pinterest shows many copies of the colored 1926 version but none of this 1931 version. As I have mentioned a propos of the other versions, one of Nézière's gifts is the inclusion of contemporary technology, from bicycle pumps to biplanes.
A Fox in One Bite
(Kodansha, 1965) Scofield, Elizabeth; Wakana, K.
This is a set of six stories, all dealing with foxes and/or badgers. I read the first four. Though filled with magic transformations, there is a fable element here, as in the first story. A boy duels with a bewitching fox and challenges her to transform into a "dumpling in my hand." She does, and he eats it/her. Victory! This book has an unusual paste-over on its verso of the title-page, attributing distribution rights in the USA to Kodansha in Palo Alto.
Fables of the Chokosi
(Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana, 1970) Kashim Chokosi and recorded by Alfred Krass
This is a 28-page pamphlet about 6" x 8¼". It offers fourteen stories generally of the "pourquoi" sort: "Why Mice Live Inside Houses"; "Why the Monkey's Neck Is So Short"; "Why People Keep Dogs." Perhaps the closest to an Aesopic fable is "Cleverness Is Stronger Than Force" (23). People are on their way to help elephant with his new farm. Rabbit tricks them on their way into helping him with his farm. A surprise in this story is that God delivers the moral at the end. "Use your head. Do not threaten people with force." I believe that this is our first publication from Ghana.
Les Fables de La Fontaine 10 LP Box Set Decca Rare with Book
(1971) Jean de La Fontaine; Oudry, Jean Baptist
This is a combination of ten 33 rpm records with a booklet 12" x 12" explaining the records. The fable illustrations in this booklet all come from Oudry. Here is, I believe, a rare find in good condition. The only other reference on the web that offers a date is as stymied as I am, since the first record has a range of 1958-71 for its recordings. The first thing about this magnificent find is that the records are in pristine shape. The second thing is that they come in a gorgeous red cloth box. The third thing is that they also include a booklet, sixteen pages in length. The booklet moves from an essay on La Fontaine to a detailed description of the contents of the 20 sides of these records. I have not gone out of my way to include recordings in this collection, but this set seems an unusual find. I am bolstered by the fact that the online offering I mention above asks for 200 euros! This set, by the way, spent too much time in someone's basement!
The Four Kings of the Forest: A Fable
(The Press in Tuscany Alley, 1973) Joyce Lancaster Wilson; Joyce Lancaster Wilson
Although named a fable by the author/illustrator, this 20-page story reaches beyond the usual limits of a fable. It tells the story of four kings -- lion, elephant, gorilla, and snake -- who learn from a boy and make him a fifth king. Ingres mold-made paper with color lineoleum block prints. As Powell's description says, "The colors used and the illustrations are charming." Bound by green thread.
Thomas Bewick's Fables of Aesop and Others: Nineteen headpieces proofed from the original wood-blocks
(Florin Press, 1980) Middleton, Hunter; Bewick, Thomas; Iain Bain
This is an exceptional addition to the collection in many ways. Not many of our books are so elaborately boxed! And the box has cloth covers! Besides the promised nineteen blocks, apparently assembled from various collectors in the USA, there are four blocks from the private collection of Iain Bain. As far as I can make out from the "About this Production" statement at the end of the book, 130 copies were made. A statement there is "Every copy is numbered, this being X." I have no idea what "X" means here. One other special feature of this item: it has the smell of having been in a musty place for some time! This little book lays out the painful and painstaking effort of Bewick to complete his last work. I learn here, for example, that Bewick was unhappy with the first printing of the book in 1818 but happier with the second edition of 1823. This book is an attempt to see Bewick's illustrations "at their best in impressions that would have well pleased their creator" (15). There is much more here, but I will stop for now. This piece is a plunge into a bibliographer's world!
Tales and Legends from India
(Rupa and Company, 1990) Bond, Ruskin; Scott, Sally
One of three sections of this 154 page paperback presents five tales from the Jataka (53). "The Hare in the Moon" tells of the self-sacrificing hare that jumps into the flames to be food for a beggar, who turns out to be the god Sakka. "The Ugly Prince and the Heartless Princess" is the story of a devoted but ugly prince who marries a beautiful princess. He and his father-in-law manage to hide his ugliness from her before and for a time after their marriage, but she finally sees him and flees back to her father. The prince, Kusa, comes to win her back and finally does so by conquering his father-in-law's attacking enemies. "The Crane and the Crab" is the usual KD story of the crab finding out the treacherous crane and punishing him. "Friends in Deed" is a version of the usual KD story of four friends. In this case the three are an antelope, a woodpecker and a tortoise. They extend themselves to free each other from a hunter. "Who Will Buy My Mangoes" is a story of devoted love of a prince who chooses a beautiful lower-class woman, marries her, and again wins her back when she has rejected him. There are several full-page black-and-white illustrations along the way.
The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water
(Hoopoe Books, 1998) Shah, Idries; Rodriguez, Ingrid
Here is a long 32-page development of a traditional fable motif with a novel ending. Share the Lion is misunderstood by the other animals when he roars, even when he roars "Why are you running away?" He comes to a pool thirsty and is ready to drink when he roars and so frightens himself. The other animals try to get him to realize that it is only a reflection. Finally, he has the courage to take a drink -- and the roaring image goes away. They all live happily ever after. Rodriguez has fun with the animals peeping out from behind rocks and bushes or tying their monkey tails together. The three monkeys at the poolside are doing "see no evil, hear no evil, say no evil." Full color all the way through the book. About 8½" x 11½".
Tonic for the Heart in 1000 Bottles, Volume 2
(Pauline Publications, 2006) SVD, Frank Mihalic,
Here are the next 350 of the 1000 promised stories. #446 is a Tony de Mello story stolen from Aesop. A donkey wading through a river with a load of salt frisks around after crossing, delighted to have lost his load. The next market day the owner loads the donkey with cotton, who tries the same trick and nearly drowns. #541 is about the Londoner Jonas Hanway. He "refused to accept that he had to get wet when it rained. Having seen a tent-like contraption in the Orient as protection against the sun, he adapted it for the rain. The umbrella was born." #602-614 are all attributed to Aesop. There are many more de Mello stories in this volume than in the first. Subject and title indices at the back.
Fox Fables (Farsi & English)
(Mantra Lingua Ltd, 2006) Dawn Casey/Farsi Anwar Soltani; Jago
This is a large, handsome, landscape-formatted book of 32 pages presenting two fables bilingually. It belongs to a series, of which I now have seventeen. The series presents the two fables of this book by pairing English with a number of different languages, one for each book. This used copy is enclosed in a plastic dust-jacket. FC is visually splendid! The size of the book allows Jago to create impressive illustrations like that of the crane unable to slurp up soup as well as three detailed specific views of her attempts. Casey has the crane thank the fox for his kindness politely and add: "Please let me repay you -- come to dinner at my house." The page after the story lists activities: writing, art, "maths," storytelling, and music. The second story here is "King of the Forest," and it is labelled a Chinese fable. Tiger comes upon fox and frightens him. In desperation, fox claims that he is king of the forest. Tiger roars with laughter. Fox answers that he will show tiger. "This I've got to see," tiger says. Fox gets tiger to walk behind him. Of course, every animal upon whom these two come runs away in respect. Tiger is fooled and pays his respects to the king of the forest. Fox bids him be gone and then, on the way home, has a good laugh over the whole ploy. This story is also strongly illustrated. My versions now include Arabic, Italian, Bengali, Urdu, Swahili, French, Polish, Arabic, Russian, Tamil, Mandarin, Croatian, Farsi, and Somali.
Aesop's Fables
(North-South Books, 2006) Zwerger, Selected; Zwerger, Lisbeth; Selected and Lisbeth Zwerger
Here is a second printing of a book already in the collection in its first printing. I will repeat my comments on that copy. This is the sixth version I have found of Lisbeth Zwerger's Aesop book. Her "Aesop: 12 Fabeln" appeared in 1989 as a large-format book. Two large English versions also appeared, apparently at the same time. There has been also a smaller English version and an even smaller German version. Cover pictures on other versions are either of the dancing camel or of TMCM. Here we have FC on both the cover and the front dust-jacket. This lovely book measures 9½" x 8¾". I still find Zwerger's artistry enchanting. I cannot check the various English translations right now. I am curious because the translation here, unattributed, is copyrighted by North-South Books in 2006. The dust jacket speaks of this book as a "reissue of Lisbeth Zwerger's gorgeously illustrated edition." The back cover and back dust-jacket both put at the top "12 Fables by Aesop," the original German title.

Browse

Browsing CU Test Comunity by Issue Date

Results Per Page

Sort Options