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Item The Book of the Bear: Being Twenty-one Tales newly translated from the Russian(The Nonesuch Press, 1926) Harrison, Jane; Mirrlees, Hope; Garnett, RayThis 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!Item 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."Publication 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.Item Les Fables de La Fontaine 10 LP Box Set Decca Rare with Book(1971) Jean de La Fontaine; Oudry, Jean BaptistThis 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!Item 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. GrandvilleThe 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.Item Selections from Aesop's Fables (Cover: Aesop's Fables)(D. Lothrop, 1884) Bates, Clara Doty; Garrett, Lungren, Hassam, Barnes, SweeneyHere 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.Item Tonic for the Heart in 1000 Bottles, Volume 3(Pauline Publications, 2007) SVD, Frank Mihalic,Here are the final 300 of the 1000 promised stories. Aesop shows up early here, in #707. The bee, urged to ask for whatever she wanted by Zeus, asks for the power to kill with her sting anyone who steals her honey. Zeus does not like the request but grants it with the stipulation that losing her sting will kill her. A favorite source for Mihalic is "Quote" magazine. #871 is from there: A young lover is writing a love-letter to his beloved. "I would do anything for you -- walk through fire, swim the greatest river….So I'll come tomorrow evening if it's not raining." #945 tells of a Pravda report on a car race with only two contestants, one Russian and one American. Without mentioning how many were in the race, Pravda reported that the Russian came in second and the American next to last. Subject and title indices at the back.Item 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.Item Tonic for the Heart in 1000 Bottles, Volume 1(Pauline Publications, 2006) SVD, Frank Mihalic,Here are the first 350 of the 1000 promised stories. They are decidedly eclectic. I will mention several to give an idea of the spread of topics and approaches. In #33, a woman driving a car pulls over because a car has been following her, and the following car also pulls over. She gets out to remonstrate and finds that she has been towing an empty car with which she locked bumpers in the parking lot. In #200, we find the story of Aesop serving tongues as the finest and worst of meats. The story is attributed to John Koster; it has a king as Aesop's master, even though it mentions Xanthus and Aesop in a parenthesis after its title. #254 is a pleasant Tony de Mello story to the effect that saints have a way of changing God's plans. In #285, a man complains to the tram driver every evening that his feet hurt. "Why not get new shoes?" In response, the man explains that his wife has left him, his son is in jail, and his daughter ran away from home. He has no comfort left in life except to arrive home each evening and take off his worn shoes. This is like those "armaria" of sacred scripture with an abundance of texts for speakers and conversationalists. Subject and title indices at the back.Item Fables de Lafontaine: Imagerie d'Épinal(Pellerin & Companie, 1850) ÉpinalWe 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!Item Fables de La Fontaine(Librairie Ancienne et Moderne, 1827) Jean de La FontaineThis 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.Item Aesop's Fables(Square Fish: Henry Holt and Company, 2012) Hague, Selected; Hague, Michael; Selected and Michael HagueAs so often happens, I presumed that this paperback book of 28 pages was a duplicate of something already in the collection. As so often happens, I was wrong. Square Fish is the publisher now, which is described on the back cover as an imprint of MacMillan, even though the title page still has Henry Holt and Company after Square Fish. I still enjoy the title-page's monkey-artist sitting on a book and creating a pen-and-ink sketch of a dandy fox. This monkey comes complete with beret and scarf! This copy means that I have been finding Michael Hague Aesop books for thirty-five years!Item Palmer Cox's Funny Animals(M.A. Donohue and Company, 1903) Cox, Palmer; Cox, PalmerI 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.Item Thomas Bewick's Fables of Aesop and Others: Nineteen headpieces proofed from the original wood-blocks(Florin Press, 1980) Middleton, Hunter; Bewick, Thomas; Iain BainThis 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!Item Tales and Legends from India(Rupa and Company, 1990) Bond, Ruskin; Scott, SallyOne 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.Item The Lion Who Saw Himself in the Water(Hoopoe Books, 1998) Shah, Idries; Rodriguez, IngridHere 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".Item Fables for Wisdom Seekers Young and Old(First Edition Design Publishing, 2017) Meyers, Barbara A.; O'Dwyer, Susan AdeleMeyers is a therapist. She loved stories as a child. "Now as a therapist, I listen to and hold the emotional space for others' stories." The book "is a direct outgrowth of my work over the years and is written for parents, grandparents, teachers, counselors, and other adults who care about and love children and want to assist them on their journey to wholeness." Fables, she writes, "teach us about our own humanness" (all from the Preface, i-ii). The fourteen stories here are each six to eight pages long, with one full-page colored illustration by O'Dwyer. Each story is followed by about three pages of "talking points." The first story tells of Geri the Giraffe who gets lost and listens to bad advice from Snake. Turtle at last counsels Geri to listen to her own powers as giraffe. When she does that, Geri arrives back in her own territory at her own herd. In the second story, Clara the Caterpillar wants to be rid of the "unsightly" yellow spots on her green body. Nothing helps her to get rid of the spots. She meets Sam the Spider, who is tired of being all black. He has a method for getting more colors: he stands where a piece of glass refracts a rainbow of colors, perhaps onto him. He gets hotter and hotter in these focused rays until he goes up in flames. Marvin the Mole shows up, asks what happens, and laments. He has seen the beautiful blue on the underside of Sam, which Sam of course could not see. Clara reconsiders that maybe she should be looking for her gifts rather than what she is missing. 8½" square.Item Fables de La Fontaine en Vers Provençaux(Alexandre Gueidon, 1872) Marius Bourrelly, translator, Jean de La FontaineHere 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.Item Aesop's Fables(North-South Books, 2006) Zwerger, Selected; Zwerger, Lisbeth; Selected and Lisbeth ZwergerHere 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.Item Fables de la Fontaine(Maison Alfred Mame et Fils, 1931) Jean de La Fontaine; R. de la NézièreThis 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.