1970 to 1974

1970

1970 A Book of Fables by La Fontaine.  Translated by W. d'Enno.  Illustrations by Monique Gorde.  Hardbound.  Brighton: Presentation Series: Litor Publishers.  £15 from Langdon Etraders, Harrow, UK, Feb., '19.

Here is the English version of a book I have enjoyed in the original French and in German, both published by Lito.  Two pages apiece for eleven fables.  A pleasing large-format children's book.  Among the illustrations, that of a fisherman in a newspaper hat is perhaps the most charming.  The town and country mice, well contrasted in their clothing, have been enjoying champagne.  I first found that French book twenty-six years ago!  Searching on the translator's name finally yielded a date of publication on Amazon's website.

1970 A Book of Fables and Stories.  E.F. Dodd and W.W.S. Bhasker.  Paperbound.  Madras: Simple Graded Readers: Macmillan.  See 1969/70

1970 A Harvest of Russian Children's Literature. A Treasury for All Ages. Edited, with introduction and commentary, by Miriam Morton. Foreword by Ruth Hill Viguers. Various illustrators. Berkeley: University of California Press. See 1967/70.

1970 A Little Book of Fables: Ten of the most famous Japanese fables.  Paperbound.  Osaka: Sumitomo Pavilion.  $11.50 from John Pender, Sarasota, FL, through eBay, April, '07. 

The final page notes that this pamphlet is not for commercial sale.  It looks like a promotional item from the Sumitomo Pavilion at the Osaka World's Fair in 1970.  As the beginning T of C indicates, there are ten stories on 48 pages.  They seem to be all magical fairy tales.  There are a few one-color and one two-color illustrations along the way.  A comment after each story places it in region and time and offers a comment on its meaning.  There are rather frequent printer's errors and typos along the way.  The booklet has a musty smell.

1970 A Type Specimen of Lutetia: Several Fables of Aesop. S.A. Handford. Illustrated with the wood blocks of Helen Siegel [sic], later identified as Helen Siegl. Pamphlet. Limited edition of 975. Printed in Nevada City, CA. Nevada City, CA: Harold Berliner, Printer. $10 from Robert Perata, Santa Rosa, CA, by mail, June, '99.

Six fables from Handford's Penguin translation give Berliner a chance to show off specimens of his lovely type, specifically Lutetia 12D Roman and Italic, 14D Roman and Italic, and 16D Roman.. Good woodblock illustrations by Siegl (see her 1964 Aesop's Fables with Anne Terry White) include 6 successes against various-colored backgrounds and one with only the tan background ("The Boar and the Fox") and no image! I now have two books of Berliner specimens; Robert Perata had a third but sold it the day before I called him! The other Berliner that I have is the 1971 Baskerville with Gertrud Nelson's art work. For a printer, the mistake on the artist's name here has to be embarrassing, I would think….

1970 Aesop: The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian. ...in Eloquent, and Ornate Scottis Meter. Be Maister Robert Henrisone. Newlie Imprentit at Edinburgh, be Robert Lekpreuik (?) at the expensis of Henrie Charteris. No illustrations. NY: Da Capo Press: Plenum Publishing Co. See 1570/1970.

1970 Aesop 50 Fabler.  Genfortalt af Kjeld Elfelt.  Illustrert af Ib Spang Olsen.  Hardbound.  Copenhagen: Det Schonbergske Forlag.  DKK 130 from Svendborg Antikvariat "Aeseloret," Svendborg, Denmark, August, '14.  

Here is one of the excellent Scandinavian books I found after my trip there.  This book is a short 62 pages and has no T of C or AI.  But it has delightful black-and-white illustrations, starting from MSA on 5, 6, and 7.  Other favorite illustrations here include WS (10 and 11); "The Wolf and the Lion" (12; also on the cover); FG (23); and DS (36).  Best of all may be the proud and careless milkmaid, who does not even sense the jar falling back off of her head (28-29).  The book seems well produced.

1970 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Jacob Lawrence. No editor named. Dust jacket. NY: Windmill Books. $4 at Arkadyan Books and Prints, San Francisco, August, '88.

The flyleaf is right: the eighteen tales here are illustrated with "haunting" cubist imagery. One especially good technique, used four times, expands a first illustration into a larger second one in a different color. The best include "The Monkey and the Camel," "The Lioness," FC, "The Hare and the Frogs," and "The Thief and the Dog." Too many animals here cry! This may be my only Aesop up until now by a Black. A curious inscription quotes Aesop, but the citation is not from this book!

1970 Aesop's Fables. Dr. Charles L. Shedd and Staff of the Reading Disability Clinic. Illustrated by Staff of the Reading Disability Clinic. Paperbound. $9.94 from William H. Brown, Midland City, AL, through eBay, Feb., '13.

This is a curious and delightful find. It is a landscape book about 8½" x 5½" with about half of its spiral binding intact. Another piece of the binding fell away as I was working with this book. I cannot find an indication of where this Reading Disability Clinic existed. Left-hand pages offer texts and right-hand pages line illustrations, at least some done after Gheeraerts. The ink for both texts and illustrations is brown throughout. The best illustration may well be for "The Ass and the Lapdog." Another strong illustration seems to present Aesop on the cover as a monk. The texts use Croxall as their basis. The heavy, rough-cut paper used for the internal pages features diverse colors. The booklet presents twenty-seven fables, and there is no T of C. The cover has only "Aesop's" without the added word "Fables." This collection is made to save and to gather crazy limited-volume printings like this one! 

1970 Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces. Fables and Drawings. Kenneth Patchen. Paperbound. NY: A New Directions Book. $1.95 at Renaissance, June, '93.

Should we blame Patchen's work on Joyce? On drugs? I see here largely a category-smashing linguistic virtuosity. There are lots of lovely word-plays, like "moral torportude" (23) and "eavesdripper" (24). One clear reference to Aesop comes in the title "The Wolf That Cried Ohboy Ohboy" (22). This is demanding reading: is it worth it? It is surprising to me that this book was in the Wauwatosa Methodist Church Library.

1970 Aflame and Afun of Walking Faces: Fables and Drawings.  Kenneth Patchen.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  NY:  New Directions.  $29.75 from Chloe's Books, Loomis, CA, through ABE, Feb., '16.

Should we blame Patchen's work on Joyce?  On drugs?  I see here largely a category-smashing linguistic virtuosity.  There are lots of lovely word-plays, like "moral torportude" (23) and "eavesdripper" (24).  One clear reference to Aesop comes in the title "The Wolf That Cried Ohboy Ohboy" (22).  This is demanding reading:  is it worth it?  I have found several versions of the paperback of this book.  I was surprised to find it available in hardback.

1970 Aiszoposz Mesei.  Bodor Andas.  Hardbound.  Bucharest: TEKA: Kriterion Konyvkiado.  1500 Forints in Budapest, Sept., '17.

Here is a compact hardbound book offering a Hungarian translation of 358 numbered fables.  Page 35 offers the right resources for a book published in 1970, I believe.  It includes Perry besides the earlier Chambry, Halm, and Hausrath.  My sense of the world of Eastern Europe in 1970 has me notice that this book in Hungarian is produced in Bucharest.  Is this part of the great Soviet distribution of tasks?  There is a T of C at the end.  The book is still available in Eastern European used book shops.

1970 Androcles and the Lion. Pictures by Grabianski. Illustrations (c)1970 Ueberreuter Druck und Verlag. Text (c)1970 Franklin Watts Inc. and J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd. Printed in Austria. Duts jacket. NY: Franklin Watts, Inc. $1.75 at Minneapolis Public Library, Jan., '97.

Grabianski returns here to a much fuller version of the story that led off his 1965 Das große Fabelbuch. The book has received extensive use, but its pictures are still captivating. The version here has several surprises for me. Androcles and "Lion" (the beast's proper name) are both in North Africa. Androcles is a Black. The story follows Lion from his birth until the time that he enters the arena in Rome. Androcles is a Christian shepherd, not a runaway slave. Lion not only spares Androcles, but he also kills a leopard released expressly to kill Androcles. The emperor sends them both back to freedom in North Africa. Lion cannot speak or understand human speech.

1970 Androcles and the Lion. Retold from Apion by Quail Hawkins. Illustrated by Rocco Negri. Dust jacket. NY: Coward-McCann. $3.95 at Blake, Aug., '93. Extra copy without dust jacket signed in March, '71 by Quail Hawkins for $3.98 at Half Price Books, Berkeley, Dec., '96.

A well-told version of the story, with bold red, gold, and black woodcuts. The best of the designs is probably that of the Colosseum; otherwise they are dramatic but not to my taste. Hawkins is careful: her emperor spares Androcles by holding up clenched fists. Everything in Hawkins' telling is well motivated except perhaps the trip to some water after the thorn-removal; here Androcles somehow understands that the lion wants him to follow.

1970 Bibliographie des Livres de Fables de La Fontaine Illustrées.  Extrait de l'ouvrage du Dr. Armand Després.  Paperbound.  Amsterdam: J.C. Gieben.  €21.80 from Antiquariat Brinkman, Amsterdam, Feb., '14.  

Here is a reprint of a precis of a scholarly work since overtaken by at least two works I am aware of: "Les Fables de La Fontaine: Quatre Siècles d'illustration" by Alain-Marie Bassy in 1986 and "Das Illustrierte Fabelbuch" by Wolfgang Metzner, Paul Raabe, and Ulrike Bodemann in 1998.  Despres' work seems to have concluded in 1888; the original from which this reproduction is made was published in 1892.  What one finds here is more difficult for contemporary researchers to work with, I believe.  The author works in categories that include "fables alone," "complete works," "diverse editions," "suites of illustrations," and "cheap editions."  Two supplements make for accuracy but harder searching.  I find, in the original group from 1888, the following totals: 138 fables alone editions, 18 complete works, 6 diverse editions, 9 suites of illustrations, and 24 cheap editions.  The first supplement adds some 37 publications and the second supplement about 10 more.  This may be a helpful secondary source in tracking down less known editions of La Fontaine.

1970 City Mouse--Country Mouse. And two more mouse tales from Aesop. No editor. Pictures by Marian Parry. NY: Scholastic Book Services. $.90 from Powell's in Portland, '85. With a 33 rpm recording, a gift of Marian Adamski, Nov., '92. One extra copy with recording for $1, Jan., '88, and one extra without recording for $1.48 at Half Price Books, St. Paul.

Meant for little kids. Pleasant water-colors with cartoon statements. The illustration style is itself that of kids. I enjoy the assemblies in BC. Also included is LM.

1970 Corpus Fabularum Aesopicarum. Volumen Prius. Fabulae Aesopicae soluta oratione conscriptae. Edidit August Hausrath. Fasciculus prior. Editionem alteram curavit Herbert Hunger. Leipzig: Teubner. $11.70 at Schoenhof's, Cambridge, MA, '85.

This book apparently includes the addenda and corrigenda of Haas appended in the 1957 edition, which this edition revises (see my comments there). There is an "Ordo Fabularum" beginning on XXXIII. This fascicle contains the first 181 fables; the division between fasciculi seems to fall between two <L6J,D4H fables. Might Volume II have been foreseen as poetry?

1970 Dame Cigale et Dame Fourmi. Adapté par Emanuel Calamaro. Illustré par Edouard Nofziger. Laguna Language Series, #F-5. Buffalo: Kenworthy Educational Service. $2.95 at Powell's, Portland, July, '93.

Very pleasant little sideways pamphlet. The series' purpose is to learn by having fun. The presentation and version both help to that end. The figures are lively. The best may be 14's image of the cricket washing clothes with two hands and using a third hand to pick up another dirty garment. The text uses repetition effectively. The version moves into new and surprising developments: the cricket learns to work as the ant's servant; the ant sings through winter while the cricket works; in spring, the cricket goes out collecting like an ant! Even the page numbers are cleverly spelled out in French.

1970 Dame Cigale et Dame Fourmi. Adapté par Emanuel Calamaro. Illustré par Edouard Nofziger. Hardbound. Buffalo: Laguna Language Series, #F-5: Kenworthy Educational Service. $2.50 from an unknown source, July, '00.

This book is exactly identical with the pamphlet version of the same year, title, and publisher. I do not know whether the "Perma-Bound" hard cover comes from the publisher or perhaps from some librarian. In any case, the cover is now upside-down and backwards. That is, one opens the book to a blank upside-down last page. I will repeat my comments here from the pamphlet version. Very pleasant little sideways booklet. The series' purpose is to learn by having fun. The presentation and version both help to that end. The figures are lively. The best may be 14's image of the cricket washing clothes with two hands and using a third hand to pick up another dirty garment. The text uses repetition effectively. The version moves into new and surprising developments: the cricket learns to work as the ant's servant; the ant sings through winter while the cricket works; in spring, the cricket goes out collecting like an ant! Even the page numbers are cleverly spelled out in French.

1970 Dame Renard et Dame Cigogne. Adapté par Emanuel Calamaro. Illustré par Edouard Nofziger. Laguna Language Series, #F-6. Buffalo: Kenworthy Educational Service. $2.95 at Powell's, Portland, July, '93.

Very pleasant little sideways pamphlet. The series' purpose is to learn by having fun. The presentation and version both help to that end. The figures are lively. Both hostesses gussy themselves up beforehand. The stork has sharpened her beak! Both try all sorts of approaches to the plate and the vase, respectively. Even the page numbers are cleverly spelled out in French.

1970 Dankbarkeit der Delphine und andere Tiergeschichten der Antike. Herausgegeben von Jost Perfahl. Mit Zeichnungen von Gerhart Kraaz. Boxed. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Bremen: Sammlung Dieterich: Carl Schünemann Verlag. €10 from Antiquariat Stange, Heidelberg, August, '06.

This is a beautifully produced book. It includes fables from many different authors: Aesop has nine (11); Phaedrus has nine (42); Babrius has twelve (75); Aelian has AL (90); and Romulus has four (140). I never realized how much Aelian is the master of xreiai; AL is the first of many by him here. The cover story is on 92. There is a list of the illustrations on 165. Good fable illustrations are "Fox and Goat" (12) and DW (48). Other good illustrations include the war of frogs and mice (24) and the title-picture, which is both frontispiece and front cover of the dust-jacket. 

1970 Die Schwiegermutter und das Krokodil: 111 bunte Bilderbogen für alle Land- und Stadtbewohner soweit der Himmel blau ist. Herausgegeben von Werner Hirte. Second edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Berlin: Eulenspiegel Verlag. €10 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '07.

I fell in love with this book in my delightful hours back at the Dresdener Antiquariat, but I wondered if I could find a way to justify taking it along. I felt very lucky when I reached 64 and found a page of "Fabeln." Each of these fifteen one-picture vignettes is a single rhyming couplet, often a conversation between two characters. The kakadu says "Listen to me," but as soon as the nightingale starts to sing, everyone listens to her. The swan says "Mythology speaks of my song," and the nightingale answers "But I sing in reality." A mouse gets into a granary and says "This is my territory," but a cat answers that he is the master in this house. The fox is just declaring that the stronger is the master as he lays hold of a rabbit -- and is shot by a hunter. The combination of text and illustration in these Bilderbogen is delightful. A look across the page from the fables (65) shows some fine illustrations. My prize goes to the bee near the farmer's nose. The title-story (29) is a good example of the book's fun. The Meier Family wins the lottery and has ideas what to do and especially where to go. Mother-in-law carries the day by deciding that they will go to Egypt. A krokodil falls in love with her. When she runs, he tells her to stand still or he will have to use force. She does not, and he does. Love conquers. "Such a fat mother-in-law," he declares, "is a delicacy." The book's colophon does not indicate when the first edition may have come out.

1970 El Rey Pancho y El Primer Reloj. Escrito Por Norberto C. Lopez. Illustraciones De Marianne Gutierrez. Mankato: Oddo Publishing. $1.98 at Logos in Santa Cruz, Aug., '89.

Now here is an unusual book that teaches how to read the clock. A second race between tortoise and hare is held, with a big bet. The hare goes twelve times faster than the tortoise. The bet-winner, King Pancho of Mexico, asks for the two animals and a Mariachi band rather than the kingdom that he has won. The illustrations are delightful.

1970 Fab La Fontèn.  Mont Rosier Dejean, translator.  Pamphlet.  Port-au-Prince: Monrozié Déjan.  $5 from The Owl at the Bridge, Rhode Island, through Biblio, Nov., '23.

Here is a one-staple pamphlet of 73 pages, 6¼" x 8½".  It is reproduced from typescript.  It is bilingual, with French on left-hand pages, and Haitian Creole translations on the right-hand pages. The seller notes that it was later expanded and published in letterpress and that this copy comes from the library of Raphael G. Urciolo.  The bilingual translations begin after two pages of tips on Haitian Creole.  There is a bilingual AI on 71-72 and a full page of errata on 73.  Our collection has here another piece of ephemera saved from the bonfire!

1970 Fabeln: Formen, Figuren, Lehren. Klaus Doderer. Various illustrations. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Zurich: Atlantis Verlag. DM 50 from an unknown source, August, '00.

I have long looked forward to enjoying this book. As I learn a little bit about the critical battles over fable interpretation of the last fifty years, this book stands out as a beginning of a re-appreciation of fable. Doderer proclaims that the death of fable announced around mid-century is a misperception. The genre was and is strong. He speaks eloquently against a method of identifying an ideal sense of fable and then measuring everything as lacking against this ideal. He is ready rather to see fable in many places and to enjoy it in all of them. He begins then, after an engaging introduction, with investigations of four sample fables by, respectively, Aesop, Luther, Lessing, and Kafka. He moves on in his second chapter to the world of the fable figures, including their social conflicts. Doderer's third chapter grows out of the "Wahrheitssuche" that he sees in fable. The fourth chapter investigates the structural elements of fable and looks at fable's neighboring genres. "Fabeln als Jugendlektüre" is Chapter Five. Chapter Six handles fable theories. Chapter Seven offers a look into various ages of fable in history, including ancient, medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, 18th century, "Between Enlightenment and the 20th Century," and finally contemporary fable authors. This is besides a lovely book with perhaps eight pages in full color and a panoply of historical illustrations. I am grateful for this chance at last to look inside, and I look forward to a thorough study of it someday. 

1970 Fabeln: Nicht von La Fontaine, sondern von dessen Schüler. N.O. Scarpi. Illustriert von Barberis. Dust jacket. Zürich/Stuttgart: Werner Classen Verlag. DM 10 at Kulbach in Heidelberg, Aug., '88.

Witty fables generally only very loosely after LaFontaine. The closest to original material is the story of the wolf damning men for eating what he wants to eat. The tales are very enjoyable. The illustrations offer good support.

1970 Fables & Fabulous Yarns: Columbia-Minerva Knit Fashions for Boys & Girls No. 775. Paperbound. (NY): Columbia-Minerva Corporation. $1.99 from Julia Schwyhart, Rolla, MO, through eBay, Oct., '07.

This 52-page magazine is vintage 70's stuff. Psychedelic patterns abound in the background of the pictures as kids play with stuffed animals. Rosemary Winston's statement on the first page works to make sense of the connection with animals without ever mentioning "fable." Rhyming poems accompany pictures of kids dressed up in knit fashions. Thus with a picture of a boy and girl with a rooster and cow one reads "Four friends of rural estate/Engaged in uneven debate/With cock to preside/And calf to decide/the merits of chicken or steak" (5). The non-photographic pages seem to give instructions on how to knit the garments in the pictures. There actually is a prose fable on 28 about a "social climbing lion" who cultivated the company of two stylish sisters only to learn that their clothes were knit inexpensively. "Humbled by this lesson, he gave up pretention in favor of good company and the three became fast friends. Moral: what one finds by chance is often superior to what one seeks." One could say of fable with Dr. Seuss, "My, the places you will go!"

1970 Fables by the Late Mr John Gay. In One Volume Complete with wood-engravings by Gillian Lewis Tyler. Signed, #361 of 1950. Barre, MA: Imprint Society. $25 at Preservation Book Shop, Evanston, May, '89.

Sixty-six strong wood engravings by Tyler, some of which are hard to read. A beautifully produced book. The best of the illustrations are for "The Mother, the Nurse and the Fairy" (13), "The Lady and the Wasp" (25), "The Sick Man and the Angel" (74), "The Universal Apparition" (85), and "The Jugglers" (113).

1970 Fables from Czechoslovakia. From Fables by Mother with Pictures by Father by F.J. Andrlík and Ant. Krátky. Translated and adapted by M. Melvina Svec. Illustrations by Jean E. King. Hardbound. Cedar Rapids, IA: Stamats Publishing Co. $10.08 from Barbara Syrell, Oswego, NY, through Ebay, April, '00.

The texts and illustrations are apparently identical with the pamphlet version I have listed under the same title under the year "1980?" For convenience's sake, I will reproduce those short comments here. Ten simple fairy tales, sometimes quite sentimental, with heavy morals about obeying parents, being courteous, and working before playing. " The Kids and the Wolf " (16) is closest to a standard fairy tale. In "The Good Tubing" (19), the bear is trapped in the wedge by his intended victim, Grandfather Souchek. Dwarves give Peter a cap that renders him invisible (22). He may eat all he wants, but he may not take any food with him. The best of the simple illustrations may be that of the hen with her feet up in the air (27).

1970 Fables in Monosyllables. By Mrs. Teachwell, a Pseudonym for Lady Ellenor Fenn. Printed with Morals to a Set of Fables. Yorkshire: S.R. Publishers, Ltd./NY: Johnson Reprint Corporation. See 1783/1970.

1970 Fables Mongo. R.P. G. Hulstaert, M.S.C.. Paperbound. Brussels: Académie royale des Sciences d'Outre-Mer. $40 from The Book House on Grand, St. Paul, March, '96.

I have for a long time avoided this huge 671-page book. It combines three languages in offering and commenting upon the fables of the Mongo people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. At least that is what I think it does! If there were a competition among the 6700 books of this collection for the most "recherché" or academic or unexpected, this book would be in the running. After just a few pages of introductory material (in Flemish?), there are three major sections, as the T of C on 671 shows: "Various Animals," "The Turtle Cycle," and "The Antelope Cycle." A bilingual T of C for the first part (308-13) lists some 125 fables. As will happen in the other two sections, that T of C is preceded by alphabetical lists of the animals involved in these fables. Judging from that T of C, I found no fables that seemed to have been imported from the usual fables, say, of La Fontaine. I tried one: #68: "The Eagle and the Monkey." King Elephant once ordered all the animals to form two groups, "up above" and "down below." The eagle urged the monkey to join the "up above" group, but he refused. Some time later, the eagle found the monkey eating the fruit in a tall tree, challenged him for eating the food of the "up above" animals, and -- receiving no answer -- killed him. Good fable! The T of C for the second part on 562-64 lists 63 fables. The same sort of check here discovered #44, "The Tortoise and the Two Ducks," familiar from Kalila and Dimna. I notice a footnote that this fable is unusual because it presents the tortoise as stupid. People on the ground say "Come, look at the king of tortoises!" The tortoise opens his mouth to say "Yes, I am the king of tortoises!" The "Antelope Cycle" contains 24 fables; their T of C is on 668-69. I am very lucky to have come across this unusual book! 

1970 Fables of Indian Dances. As Recorded by Regina Albarado de Cata; Collected and Arranged by Thelma Clarke. Paperbound. Albuquerque, NM: Chaparral Printing Co.; Clarke Industries. $0.95 from The Bookmonger, Shoreline, WA, through eBay, Dec., '06.

There are six legends here. As interesting as the legends is the story of the storyteller, born in Colorado of a Spanish father. She married a young Indian who became a three-term pueblo governor in San Juan Pueblo in northern New Mexico. Regina Albarado told Spanish and Indian stories for years, made pottery and dolls, taught traditional Indian crafts, and spent eleven years creating a tapestry of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Besides several photographs of Regina there are frequent sketches accompanying the six legends. The legends help to explain the characters and movements of each of the dances.

1970 Fables of the Chokosi.  Told by Kashim Chokosi and recorded by Alfred Krass.  Paperbound.  Chereponi, Ghana: Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Ghana.  $12.99 from Melanie Bolich, Elverson, PA, through Ebay, Feb., '20.

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.

1970 Fables on Four Modern and Four Ancient Sciences. By George G. Haydu. Dust jacket. Boston: Branden Press. $5.95 from Barbara and Bill Yoffee (?), April, '92.

A strange collection of eight short prose pieces, written by a polymath and curiously divided. The two I could best identify with are the third and fourth. The third, on psychiatry, is "The Frog Who Got Too Big for His Breeches." Nothing can help Freddie the Frog until the psychiatrist prescribes a swelled head, the perfect balance for his problem of being overbig for his breeches. The next story, on poetics, speaks of a leaf that wants to be free of its tree and fly like a bird. I find this book difficult because of its shifting tone: sophomoric, satiric, poetic. "Fable" here means didactic narrative, but the teaching process is flawed, I think.

1970 Fábulas Ilustradas. Textos e Desenhos de Gabriel Ferrao. Venda Nova - Amadora: Editorial Ibis. €35 from Eduardo Seguñus, Carcavelos, Portugal, May, '09.

This is a large-format album of 240 seven-colored chromolithographed stamps. They are distributed six to a page. Somebody did a lot of work to get this album filled! Many of the forty fables are traditional: TH; "Mouse, Cat, and Rooster"; GA; FS; LM; GGE; "Hares and Frogs"; FG; DS; OF; TMCM; TB; "Lion and Mosquito"; WL; "Donkey and Wolf"; DLS; FM; UP; WC; "Dying Lion"; "Lion, Rabbit, and Gazelle"; "Eagle and Crow"; "Donkey, Dog, and Wolf"; "Fox and Lion"; FC; and "Chanticleer." There are about ten that are hard for me to decipher. Lively cartoons, and a complete album! The single staple that constitutes this brochure's binding is loosening at the booklet's center. I have been unable to track down exactly how I came to know of this album and order it.

1970 Fairy Tales. Edited by Eve Morel. Pictures by Gyo Fujikawa. NY: Platt & Munk: Grosset & Dunlap. $1.25. Extra copy a gift of Wendy Wright, June, '92.

A soft book for kids that cheats by putting in TMCM. Both illustrations for that are good.

1970 Fantastic Fables. Ambrose Bierce. Dover (NY) reprint of original published by G.P. Putnam's Sons: NY. See 1898/1970.

1970 Five Fables from France. Lee Cooper. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. London: Abelard-Schuman. $10 from an unknown source, August, '98?

These five stories are trickster-stories and legends, especially about tricking the devil, who is often here Monsieur Ropotou. I like three of these tales particularly. The first is "The Girl Who Played a Trick on the Devil" (7). The trick includes a word-play on selling a "sole" to the devil. The second is "The Three Butchers from Reims" (26). In it, a young man outsmarts the three butchers and his own lawyer in a classic sting. The third is "The Strange Feathery Beast" (58), which uses the "tops and bottoms" trick. That is, Vidalou goes into partnership with Monsieur Ropotou, offering him the choice of taking either the tops or the bottoms of what he produces. When the devil chooses the bottoms, Vidalou grows barley. When he chooses tops, he grows carrots. When he chooses both, he grows beans and harvests them early. The art is strong here and strongly presented. Do not miss on 74 the picture of the "new beast" that Vidalou creates to get rid of Monsieur Ropotou after the crop contests. Unfortunately, this book has nothing to do with fables in the sense I want to pursue.

1970 Florian's Fables. Miniature. Translator not acknowledged. Introduction is signed by "F.E.I." Illustrations by J.J. Grandville. #24 of 250. Franklin, NH: Hillside Press. $15 at Pepper and Stern, Boston, Dec., '89.

Nicely executed miniature. Nine fables, each with an illustration. The translator is the same as in my 1888 version. Florian's fables still strike me as preachy: there is little action and plenty of moralizing talk.

1970 Folk Tales from Korea. Third Edition, fourth printing. Collected and translated by Zong In-Sob. No illustrations. Elizabeth, NJ, and Seoul: Hollym International Corp. See 1952/70/82/86.

1970 Frösch- und Mäusekrieg. Deutsch von Christian Graf zu Stolberg. Art by Renate Totzke-Israel. Epilogue by Herbert Greiner-Mai. 1. Auflage. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Berlin: Rütten & Loening. €4 from Geographische Buchhandlung Atlantis, Berlin, August, '07.

I could not pass this delightful little book up when I saw it. Somehow the art speaks of the old East Germany. I was thus happy to find it in Berlin. The art suggests that the first encounter of mouse and frog was an encounter between the sexes. Page 9 portrays them both rather graphically and also charmingly. Stolberg did this good translation in 1784, and it still reads well now. Whether these are sense lines or unrhyming verse, the work moves easily forward, and the Homeric parody is well sustained. Further good illustrations are those of Semmelnager, the father of the killed mouse, on 24 and the three battle scenes on 44-45 and on the two end-papers. The Nachwort by Herbert Greiner-Mai on 59-63 helps put the work in perspective.

1970 Jean Anouilh: Fables/Fabeln. Übersetezung von Ulrich Friedrich Müller. Paperbound. Ebenhausen bei München: Edition Langewiesche-Brandt: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. €10 from Antiquariat Wirthwein, July, '07.

I am delighted to have found this book because I have enjoyed Anouilh's fables but have found their French quite difficult. I just checked again and I find no English translation. So this volume will help when I teach fables in two different courses in the coming year. I plan to use it together with Hugo Blank's two volume work in the "Studia Litterarea" series from Gottfried Egert. Also helpful will be Hartmut Krämer's Les Impertinentes Fables de Jean Anouilh. Except for the placement of "Scheinheilige Vorbemerkung" under "Avertissement Hypocrite," this tight little paperback has the French fables on the left facing the German translation on the right. And there is nothing here but those fable texts.

1970 Jean De La Fontaine. Ethel King. Hardbound. Brooklyn: Theo. Gaus' Sons, Inc. $10 from Uplandharma Books, Upland, IN, through eBay, Oct., '10.

I paid $10 in the tenth month of 2010 for this book. It is perhaps the most rudimentary introduction to La Fontaine that I have. I wince to read on 3 that "In 1915, the famous American poet, Marianne More, made an elegant translation of La Fontaine's fables that became the prize of the literary circles." Marianne Moore published her translation of La Fontaine in 1954. On the other hand, I am happy to see King praise Elizur Wright for his pioneering effort to translate La Fontaine into English one hundred years earlier. No French is quoted in this book of 75 pages. Indeed, there is nothing in French other than a French dictionary among the "Books Read" (76). This bibliography has correct dates and spelling for Moore. Short chapters treat La Fontaine's life, friends, and dedicatees. Chapter V consists of a T of C from Wright's edition. Chapter VI treats the fables but in rather quick and desultory fashion. The book continues on from there with La Fontaine's life. King makes much of the famous four, the "Quartattel": Boileau, La Fontaine, Moliere, and Racine. Those who read this book for their view of La Fontaine need to be urged to read further. The book was once owned by Tri-State University, which is apparently in Indianapolis, but no one ever took the book out. 

1970 La Fontaine Fables. Images de Romain Simon. Hardbound. Paris?: Grands Albums Hachette: Hachette. See 1953/70.

1970 La Fontaine Poet and Counterpoet.  Margaret Guiton.  Second printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.  See 1961/70.

1970 Les Fables de La Fontaine.  René Hausman.  Hardbound.  Paris: Terre Entière:  Dupuis.  $23.99 from Lorraine Cleff, Santa Rosa, CA, through eBay, Jan., '16.

This purchase completes a series I began finding only recently.  First I found Dupuis' publication of Hausman's work from 2010.  Next I found a 1965 copy and presumed that it was the original edition, identical in content.  The format of that book was slightly larger than that of the 2010 edition, and it turned out to be only the first half of that 2010 edition.  I saw then in Bodemann that the the original behind the 2010 edition was a pair of volumes done in 1970 and 1977.  The 1965 edition was the original of the 1970 Volume 1.  Now here is a copy of that 1970 Volume I, complemented by a copy of the 1977 Volume 2.  Like the 1965 copy, this volume contains the first 41 fables on some 89 pages.  This copy has several features that distinguish it from the earlier edition.  It drops La Haye and adds Sittard as the last of five locations for Dupuis on the title-page.  On the page facing the title-page, World Press has become World Productions, and an ISBN number has been added.  This copy is in slightly better condition.than the earlier edition, and this book's paper is slicker and shinier.  I will include comments made on the first two copies of Hausman's work that I had found.  René Hausman is a celebrated illustrator of comic books in Belgium and France.  Here his La Fontaine is wonderful!  In image after image, I found myself saying either "He has it right!" or "I have not thought of that approach to this fable."  Each fable has at least one trenchant illustration.  One knows hardly where to start in this explosion of artistry!  Look at FS on 10 and 11.  Hausman catches the chagrin of the outwitted fox wonderfully.  When it comes to humans, look at "The Worker and His Sons" on 16-17.  Hausman catches the youth of these three figures.  They will learn!  I love the dimensions of "The Bear and the Lover of Gardens" (22-23).  The rock is about to come crashing down on the insect -- and the head of the bear's own sleeping friend.  Hausman is clever to avoid the problem many illustrators have with "The Fly and the Coach" by bringing the insect to the foreground and putting the whole caravan of travelers in the background (30-31).  Again in "The Banker and the Cobbler" (56-57), Hausman does an excellent job with the faces of the two protagonists: one small and the other expansive.  TMCM on 62-63 contrasts the two phases of the rats' experience brilliantly: the color of the orgy stands out against the black-and-white fear of the flight.  Grippeminaud could not be more frightening than he is on 74 as the witless weasel and hare approach.  He already recognizes them as victims.  The approach to MSA on 86-87 took me completely by surprise, but it fits the piece well.  Recognize nature -- yours and his -- and be smart.  There is a T of C on 90-91.

1970 Les Géants: La Fontaine. Par Robert Collin. Hardbound. Paris: Les Géants de la Littérature Mondiale: Périodique Paris-Match. $10 from Unknown source, June, '04.

This is a 136-page resource for understanding La Fontaine. Chapters include a sociological inventory of Louis XIV's France, La Fontaine's life, his contemporaries, the events of his time, his friends, his work, art in his time, an anthology of his works, important personages in his work, his illustrators, and criticisms of his work. Two types of paper used in the publication allow for slick reproduction of many art works and illustrations, including some representative illustrators. This will be a useful book the next time I get to teach La Fontaine.

1970 Les Malices de Renart. D'après le Roman de Renart. Tome I. Illustrations de Roger Guy Charman. Adaptation de Georges Chappon. Collection Étoile. Paris?: Hatier. $4 at O'Gara in Chicago, May, '89.

A lovely kids' cartoon version with six episodes. Among them are two Aesopic fables, both transformed and varied. FC (#4) has a second phase in which the crow is nearly captured by the fox. "Universal Peace" (#5) involves a bird (not a rooster) and real dogs, whom of course Renart outwits. Episode #3 includes the wonderful "frozen tail" trick.

1970 More Russian Picture Tales. By Valery Carrick. Translated by Nevill Forbes. NY: Dover Publications. See 1914/70.

1970 Mythoi Tou Aisopou (Aesop's Fables). Helenes Konstantopoulou. Illustrated by Eirenes Tzougkrou. Modern Greek, with English vocabulary. NY: D.C. Divry. See 1950/70.

1970 Of Beasts, Birds and Men: Fables from Three Lands. Retold by Anne Terry White. Illustrated by Ted Schroeder. Champaign: Garrard Publishing Company. $4 from Sonya Ellingboe, Book House, Denver, March, '94. Extra copy for $4.95 from The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, July, '00.

One part of a "Myths, Tales and Legends" grouping of reading books by this publisher. Aesop, LaFontaine, and Krilov are mixed together; the book is a fine short collection of typical fables. (A quick check suggests that there is no overlap between White's fables here and those in her Aesop's Fables [1964] from Random House. The absence of a T of C or index makes the task of checking more difficult.) Here there are simple two-color illustrations; maybe the best of them is for "A Monkey and Eyeglasses" (27). There are many fables here, presumably from Krilov, that are new to me, like "The Fire and the Grove" (7), "A Clever Mechanic" (8), "Fortune and the Beggar" (20), "The Cobblestone and the Diamond" (23), "The Athlete" (42), "The Liar" (50), and "The Goblin and the Miser" (62). "The Hermit and the Bear" (10) has a good moral, "A helpful fool is more dangerous than a foe," as does "The Mosquito and the Shepherd" (35): "When a humble person tries to open a great one's eyes to truth, he cannot be certain of gratitude." Different: the lion has the wolf (not the ass) and the fox as partners dividing spoil (29), and the ox (not the ass) is the scapegoat in the time of plague (46).

1970 Still More Russian Picture Tales. By Valery Carrick. Translated by Nevill Forbes. Paperbound. NY: Dover. See 1915/70.

1970 Stuck-Villa: Illustrierte Kinder-Bücher aus 3 Jahrhunderten. Amélie Ziersch. Various artists. Paperbound. Munich: Stuck-Jugendstil Verein e. V. $8 from an unknown source, Nov., '10.

This is a catalogue of a 1970 exhibition. Stuck-Villa is apparently the venue both for the exhibit and for the meetings of the group offering the exhibit. Wikipedia tells me that the villa was built as the residence and studio of Franz von Stuck (1863-1928) and today serves as the civic museum in Munich.The heart of the catalogue are the two parts of the "Bibliographie," from 1535 to 1900 (41-112) and from about 1900 to about 1930 (119-160). There are pleasant examples of children's book art along the way; it was this rich assortment that first caught my eye in this book. Other parts of the book list lenders or offer essays and reflections. Fables are a staple here, though I can find only one or two illustrations of fables. The order can seem confusing. In each chapter it seems to be alphabetical by author or, failing an author, by title. Some of the fable entries I noticed are (by numbered entries): 91, 98-100, 102, 105-6, 123, 142-44, 147, 187, 239, 252, and 313. I note that there are some fifteen entries in the first half of the bibliography, that is before 1900, and only one entry after 1900. I am glad to see that five listings appear for Lothar Meggendorfer (439-43). This book has suffered some water damage, and there is a hole punched in its cover. Page 139 is lacking. 

1970 Tales of the Hodja.  Retold by Charles Downing.  Illustrated by William Papas.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  London: Oxford University Press.  See 1964/70.

1970 Tales from Count Lucanor. Don Juan Manuel; adapted from the Spanish by Toby Talbot. Woodcuts by Rocco Negri. Hardbound. First edition, first printing Printed in USA. NY: The Dial Press. $10 from Achaia Books, Statesboro, Georgia, by mail, May, '99.

Nine delightful stories, with full-page colored illustrations. At the beginning of each, Count Lucanor has a problem or question and calls his adviser Patronio, who tells a story. At the end of the story, Lucanor acts on Patronio's advice, and the outcome is happy. A young man who has just married a high-strung wife kills his dog, cat, and horse for not serving him water when he asks--and she becomes docile for life. A fox caught in town lies playing dead through all sorts of fur-cuttings but flees when a man says he wants the fox's heart. A crow has himself plucked and so infiltrates the owls' camp and becomes trusted--but eventually leads all the other crows back to the owls' hideout. (This is a Panchatantra story, I believe.) An Arabic King with a capricious wife goes the extra mile to satisfy her whims, even creating mud for her to make bricks from--mud not from water and straw but from rose water and sugar cane. When she complains that he never does anything for her, he asks "And what about the day of the mud?" To cross a turbulent river, you may need to discard everything you carry. A favorite counselor, accused of plotting against the king and offered a regency as a test, shaved himself and came to the king in disguise to offer his personal services to the king in his voluntary exile. A king chooses as his successor the youngest of his three sons because the man foresees needs, arrives early, digs into assigned tasks, and offers honest criticism. A once rich man feels sorry for himself as he eats peas and throws their pods on the ground--only to find that another once-richer man is eating the pods. When canons and friars argued on the basis of privilege who should toll the morning bells first, a cardinal deputed to judge decided that the first to rise would toll the bells. Talbot offers two good pages on the original Lucanor collection of fifty stories and their sources.

1970 The American Pictorial Primer. Or the First Book for Children. No author or illustrator acknowledged. Original: NY: George F. Cooledge & Brother. Facsimile: San Marino, CA: Huntington Library & Art Gallery. See 1845?/1970.

1970 The Antiques Journal: Vol. 25, No. 5: May, 1970. E. Stanley Wires. Paperbound. Kewanee, IL: Babka Publishing Co. $12 from Sally Gorelnik, North Hollywood, CA, through eBay, August, '11.

E. Stanley Wires has in this magazine an article of some three-and-a-half pages, "How Tiles Have Interpreted Aesop's Great Fables" (10-12, 31). Illustrations include six Minton tiles, four English Printed Liverpool tiles, and four Zanesville tiles. (I am fortunate to have found all six Mintons, FS among the Liverpools, and all but "Fortune and the Boy" of the Zanesville tiles.) The article itself spends a good deal of time on Aesop's life and the history of the text. Is it true that many modern translations are based on Planudes? Aesop was a slave of Iadmon, not Ladmon, of Samos. I had not known that there were two tile companies in Zanesville, OH! Aesop does show up in a lot of places!

1970 The Book of Good Love. Juan Ruiz. Translated by Rigo Mignani and Mario A. Di Cesare. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. Albany: State University of New York Press. $18 from Michael Linehan, Albany, NY, through ABE, Dec., '98.

I just finished reading Kane's translation of the same work (1933) from cover to cover. This SUNY translation has several things to offer. Now that I know it, I wish I had known it sooner! First, its introduction presents a clear overview of the whole work in terms of the narrator's fourteen love-affairs, preceded by a prayer. The introduction goes on to examine each of the affairs. I am happy to see that the writers are sensitive to the role that fables play in the narrator's pleas and the rejections by his intendeds. The translators opt for a modest prose translation rather than for the "freewheeling adaptation" that they find from Kane, even though it is "frolicsome and gay" (30). Elsewhere they describe Kane's translation as "free, lively, interpretive, at times inaccurate" (362). This squarish (6" x 7¼") book finishes with a set of notes and a bibliography. It is the text that I will read when I come back to the work next time. It has already helped me correct my understanding of several of the fables I report on in Kane's translation.

1970 The Elephants and the Mice: A Panchatantra Story. Retold and Illustrated by Marilyn Hirsh. (c)1967 The Children's Book Trust, New Delhi. First American Edition. (c)1970 NY: The World Publishing Company. $.50 at the Milwaukee Public Library, Nov., '95.

This is a delightful sideways book that shows signs of plenty of library use. The Panchatantra story has the elephants learning that they have wounded the mice and disturbed their homes; as a result, in friendly fashion they return home by another route. When the elephants are later in trouble by being tied up, the mice chew their ropes away. I am especially taken with the pictures of mice leading an Indian life, and particularly of the wounded mice after the elephants' incursion.

1970 The Fables of Aesop as first printed by William Caxton in 1484 with those of Avian, Alfonso, and Poggio, now again edited and induced by Joseph Jacobs. Volume 1: History of the Aesopic Fable. Hardbound. NY: Burt Franklin. See 1889/1970.

1970 The Grindstone of God. A Fable Retold by Carl Withers. Illustrated by Bernarda Bryson. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. $3 from the Book Shop, Burbank, Feb., '97.

A cumulative book. The horse sends the fox to get a knife with which the horse can kill himself to feed the starving fox. The search carries the fox to the sorcerer for his knife, God for his grindstone, the oxen of the moon to carry the grindstone, the son of the sun to drive them, the hare for its milk to feed the son of the sun, the aspen for a bucket, the beaver for his teeth to make the bucket, the blacksmith for his tongs to pull the teeth. After the series finally reaches a limit and is run through, there is a surprise ending. Gentle illustrations all along the way.

1970 The Life and Fables of Aesop. A selection from the version of Sir Roger L'Estrange with fifty-three fifteenth-century woodcut illustrations from the Naples (1485) version by Francisco del Tuppo. Edited by Simon Stern. Dust jacket. NY: Taplinger Publishing Co. $12 from Walk a Crooked Mile Books, Dec., '92. Extra for $12 at (more) Moe's, Nov., '96.

At last I found this book! The reproductions are good and include a number from the life of Aesop. One of the best Aesops I know, and--from my experience--very hard to come by.

1970 The Owl Book. Compiled and edited by Richard Shaw. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: Frederick Warne & Co., Inc. $0.25 from Bookseller Library Used Book Store & Coffee Shop, Milwaukee, July, '98.

This is a forty-eight page children's book in a series (whose name seems not to appear on the book) on various animals. See the companion The Fox Book (1971). Amid some lovely illustrations, we get all sorts of stories and lore of owls, including some fables. "The Owl and the Grasshopper" (Aesop, 16) and "The Owl and the Eagle" (La Fontaine, 40) are the two fables included here. The range of illustrations is especially broad in this volume.

1970 The Potter's Four Sons. A fable by Sharlya Gold. Illustrated by Jules Maidoff. First edition. Dust jacket. No place given: Doubleday & Company. $2.25 from Twice Sold Tales, Nampa, March, '96.

A very nice Jewish short story about a father who lets his four sons find their own ways in life. The story gives a sense of what is involved in a Dreidel. I enjoyed reading it!

1970 The Rich Man and the Shoe-maker:  A Fable by La Fontaine.  Brian Wildsmith.  Fourth impression.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  NY:  Franklin Watts.  $8 from Feldman's Books, Menlo Park, CA, July, '15.

I already have a third impression of this book from 1968.  Here is a better copy of the fourth impression done two years later.  See the original publication of this book by Oxford University Press in 1965 and my comments there.  The original publication byFranklin Watts was done in 1966.  Wildsmith is always colorful!

1970 The Tortoise and the Hare: A Fable Retold. By Zakir Husain. Translated from the Urdu by Khushwant Singh. Illustrations by M.F. Husain. Hardbound. New Delhi: National Book Trust, India. $20 from Second Story Books, Rockville, MD, March, '07.

The foreword describes this book--in landscape format, about 8¼" x 6½", 41 pages long--as "a children's story for adults." It was Husain's last book written in Urdu before his death. The story is set in a contemporary Indian scene. A tortoise tries to approach a fast-paced teacher walking to school. After some difficulties in understanding each other, and especially after impatient interruptions from the teacher, the tortoise can ask his question about a race long before between a tortoise and a hare. Did it happen, and who won? The teacher promises to bring a historian the next day to answer the question. Simple full-page illustrations of two and three colors punctuate the story every few pages. The teacher of history is insulted to receive a question about fairy tales, but later recommends that the tortoise ask the Professor of Ancient Culture, Civilisation and Literature the next day. The tortoise wonders what kind of learning humans go in for these days, when a simple, straightforward question "ties them in knots" (12). The doctor versed in literature begins to answer the question by stating that India and Greece excelled in fables, which reach back to Buddist times in India and are concentrated in the Jataka tales. In Greece the fables are ascribed to Aesop. The doctor breaks into a long disquisition and the tortoise falls asleep. The learned Dr. Philfor walks away. The teacher promises to bring a Professor of Philosophy the next day. The philosopher, Al Phailsuph al Hindi, offers various logical possibilities for understanding the probable or possible course of the race, including one possibility which actually equals the standard telling of the fable. He also includes the race according to Zeno's parodox, according to which, if the tortoise starts in the lead, he must end up winning. The tortoise loves this explanation! Too much discussion has given the philosopher a headache, and he needs to return home. At school, a significant conundrum is raised. A teacher has two students who scored a perfect 50 on a test, but one wrote better than the other and so was given a score of 55 out of 50. Tortoise and hare meet for their race, and tortoise gets his head start of two-and-a-half yards. In the midst of the race, a dog hunts down the hare and kills him! The tortoise is overwhelmed with regret and guilt for getting the hare into this situation. "To measure one's own knowledge against another's, to confront one's own method of prayer against another's, to weigh one's own deeds against another's--all this is the way of error. It is a sin and I am guilty of that great sin" (41).

1970 Three Rolls and One Doughnut: Fables from Russia. Retold by Mirra Ginsburg. Pictures by Anita Lobel. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: The Dial Press. $20 from an unknown source, Oct., '98?

This delightful book contains twenty-eight stories. Many are familiar in one form or another, whether as fables or other genres of literature. "Rabbit Fat" (3) is thus the story of the liar whose story shrinks in its absurd proportions the nearer it gets to liar's bridge. The illustration, as is typical for Lobel, is detailed and witty. We watch a barge cross from pier to pier, almost looking like a bridge that has lost some of its parts. Some of the stories are closer to jokes, like "How the Peasant Helped His Horse" (6). The peasant riding a cart behind the horse picked up one of the bags of grain from the cart and carried it on his shoulder! The title-story is a similar joke. A man ate three rolls and was still hungry; then he ate one doughnut and was no longer hungry (7)! TB appears, with a fine illustration, on 20. "Hatchet Gruel" (25) is a different form of the traditional "Stone Soup." "The Peasant and the Bear" (27) is a variation of the old "You take the tops and I will take the bottoms" story. "Plans" (31) replicates MM, but by having a peasant frighten away the hare the catching of which was going to start his dreamed-of future. "A Thousand Thoughts" (34) is a distant relative of "The Cat and the Fox." The fox in a hole runs and runs with a thousand thoughts. The crane has just one thought. She plays dead, and the hunter throws her out of the hole, planning of course to pick her up in a moment. The four panels on 38 do a good job of echoing "The Lion, the Fish, and the Man." The cat teacher keeps one saving trick from her tiger student (40). "Two Stubborn Goats" (42) is just as we would find it in the fable tradition. "The Valiant Lion" (45) is a highly developed version of the story of getting the lion to jump into the well to attack his reflection. "The Fox and the Thrush" (48) is a version of UP. This book is in very good condition.

1970 Tip for Tap. Written and illustrated by Ann Kirn. First edition, first printing. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. NY: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. $3.50 from The Readery on Broad Street, Durham, NC, June, '97.

Nice combinations of tan and blue adorn this telling of "The Camel and the Jackal" well. The jackal for his own eating purposes gets the camel to take him across the river. After eating quickly what he wants to eat, the jackal rouses the local people. They discover the camel, who has hardly started to eat the luscious cane that he loves, and they beat him terribly. On the way back across the river, the camel asks the jackal why he cried out and roused the people. He gets the not very satisfactory answer "I don't know. It is a custom I have." In the center of the river, the camel expresses a need to roll, and acts on it. The jackal is lucky to grab the camel's tail and thus to be pulled to shore. "Why did you do it?" the jackal asks. "I don't know," the camel answers. "It is a custom I have." When the jackal presses the question, the camel answers "Tip for tap."

1970    12 Folk and Fairy Tales.  Selected by Penelope Coquet.  Illustrated by Paul Durand.  First printing.  Hardbound.  NY: Golden Press: Western Publishing Company.  $6.50 from Daedalus Books, Portland, OR, July, '13.

Here is an earlier copy of a book already in the collection.  Originally published by Deux Coqs d'Or in Paris and Mondadori in Verona, perhaps both in 1968.  I am always curious which stories I would call fables appear in collections labelled as folk or fairy tales.  Here I find three.  "The Nightingale" (15) tells of a real nightingale who teaches a Chinese emperor a lesson about what is most important in life.  This nightingale, previously neglected and forgotten, is contrasted with the mechanical nightingale on which the emperor foolishly had relied.  "The Flying Tortoise" (33) is the traditional story of TT.  Here onlookers praise the tortoise as a "wonderful fellow."  "He called back, 'I always said I was remarkable.'"  I wonder if "The Clever Farmer" (56) might be considered a fable, even though it has several phases.  A farmer with a duck that is his starving family's favorite does some clever trading and impressing of the squire to end up with a whole sack of grain in exchange for giving up the favorite duck.  Simple colored illustrations grace each story.

1970/71 12 Folk and Fairy Tales. Selected by Penelope Coquet. Illustrated by Paul Durand. Hardbound. Second printing. NY: Golden Press: Western Publishing Company. $3.99 from Better World Books Warehouse, Mishawaka, IN, Jan., '11.

Originally published by Deux Coqs d'Or in Paris and Mondadori in Verona, perhaps both in 1968. I am always curious which stories I would call fables appear in collections labelled as folk or fairy tales. Here I find three. "The Nightingale" (15) tells of a real nightingale who teaches a Chinese emperor a lesson about what is most important in life. This nightingale, previously neglected and forgotten, is contrasted with the mechanical nightingale on which the emperor foolishly had relied. "The Flying Tortoise" (33) is the traditional story of TT. Here onlookers praise the tortoise as a "wonderful fellow." "He called back, 'I always said I was remarkable.'" I wonder if "The Clever Farmer" (56) might be considered a fable, even though it has several phases. A farmer with a duck that is his starving family's favorite does some clever trading and impressing of the squire to end up with a whole sack of grain in exchange for giving up the favorite duck. Simple colored illustrations grace each story.

1970/72 Fabeln, Parabeln und Gleichnisse. Beispiele didaktischer Literatur. Herausgegeben, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Reinhard Dithmar. No illustrations. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Gift of Franz Kuhn, Aug., '88.

A wonderful little treasure put together by one of the people who knows this area of literature best. This work is basically a collection of texts supplemented by a good twenty-page introduction, a bibliography, and a good index of motifs. Dithmar provides great material for comparisons.

1970/73 Fairy Tales and Fables. Edited by Eve Morel. Pictures by Gyo Fujikawa. 1973 printing. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. $7.50 at Kaboom, New Orleans, Dec., '92. Extra copies of the 1975 printing (with a new cover design framed in green) for $9 from All About Books, Denver, March, '94, and of the 1977 printing (with the original cover design but now finished with gloss, red title, and different signature) for $4 from Booklegger's, Chicago, March, '93.

Now here is a surprise. I have had Morel and Fujikawa's Fairy Tales (1970) for some time, had seen this book many times (I think), and had presumed that I had it. Live and learn! Morel does an excellent job of telling the fourteen fables that are here, including the morals as a final statement within the story. The bull makes an apt final comment about the gnat, for example: "It takes a small mind to be so conceited" (25). CP ends with "Where there's a will, there's always a way" (53). MSA (92) has several unusual features: baskets of produce figure in the story; all the principals fall into the water; the produce is lost; the donkey swims away. SW (49) follows the poorer version. My favorite illustration is still of the cat pulling down the tablecloth (24). Here is a great wildcard inclusion: "The Dragon and the Monkey" (40), the old "I left my heart at home" story. Only the earliest printing identifies the publisher on the title page as "A National General Company." Because of their differences, I will keep all three printings in the collection.

1970/74 Fabeln, Parabeln und Gleichnisse. Reinhard Dithmar. Third edition. Paperbound. : Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. DM 5 from an unknown source in Germany, August, '95.

A wonderful little treasure put together by one of the people who knows this area of literature best. This work is basically a collection of texts supplemented by a good twenty-page introduction, a bibliography, and a good index of motifs. Dithmar provides great material for comparisons. This third edition differs little from the second edition of 1972. It covers copies from 18000 to 23000. The price has gone up from DM 4.80 to DM 6.80. The advertisements on a final page have changed.

1970/77 Folktales of Greece. Edited by Georgios A. Megas. Translated by Helen Colaclides. Foreword by Richard M. Dorson. Paper. Phoenix Edition 1977. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. $3.50 at McIntyre & Moore, April, '89.

An engaging and well documented little volume, with excellent notes, bibliography, and lists of motifs and tale types. An early comment notes that folktales fill out the story of fables, which tended to be brief and aimed at the moral. Seven Aesopic tales are here, one (FS) reversed and one from Archilochus ("The Hedgehog and the Fox"): # 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 14, and 19.

1970/79 Fables/Fabeln.  Jean Anouilh, Übersetzung von Ulrich Friedrich Müller.  12th-14th thousand.  Paperbound.  Munich: dtv zweisprachig: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.  Gift of Otto and Burgi Knüpfer, June, '19.

Here is a curious bit of history.  I had thought that this book was already in the collection, but I could not find a record of such a book.  Jeanette Hilton came up with it, a copy of the original 1970 "Edition Langewiesche-Brandt."  This later printing keeps the same design for the cover, raises the price from DM 4.80 to DM 5.80, adds a list of other books in the series on both sides of the last page, and adds considerable prose to the back cover.  The book has become somewhat thinner, even though it adds a T of C after the beginning "Avertissement hypocrite" and is no longer 111 but rather 117 pages long.  As I wrote then, I have longed for an English translation, because Anouilh's turns of phrase often escape me.  Here is some help!  The French is on the left and the German on the right.  The original copyright 1962 belongs to Editions de La Table Ronde in Paris.

1970/81 Happy Hours in Storyland. Volume 2 of The Bookshelf for Boys and Girls. Prepared under the Supervision of the Editorial Board of the University Society. Midland Park, NJ: The University Society, Inc. $1.50 at Roskie and Wallace Books, San Leandro, June, '89.

Identical with the 1963/68 version of the same book with the same name: why a new copyright? The cover, the title page layout, the location of the publisher, the arrangement of some sections (but apparently not their contents), and some coloring have changed.

1970/87 Fish Is Fish. Leo Lionni. Part of Frederick and His Friends, a set of four books and a tape. NY: Dragonfly Books: Alfred A. Knopf. $1.25 at Heartwood, Charlottesville, VA, April, '92.

More pictures here than in my Frederick's Fables (1985), but the colors are not as lively. This is a fine story of learning to imagine different worlds than your own and of coming to love your own world.

1970/93 BA CAO VA BA CO: Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Stork. Adapted by Emanuel Calamaro. Illustrated by Edward Nofziger. Translated by Le Do. (c)1970 McKeon Publishing, Inc. Cincinnati: Another Language Press. $2.50 from AIMS International Books at the MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec., '95.

This is my first Vietnamese fable book. It is valuable among the six pamphlets from Another Language Press because it alone gives an English version.

1970/93 Dame Renard et Dame Cigogne. Adapted by Emanuel Calamaro. Illustrated by Edward Nofziger. (c)1970 McKeon Publishing, Inc. Cincinnati: Another Language Press. $2.50 from AIMS International Books at the MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec., '95.

See the original version under 1970 and my comments there. This edition has much lighter impressions of Nofziger's sprightly artwork, and uses new typeface extensively. The cover fills in the letters of the title.

1970/93 Doña Zorra y Doña Cigüeña. Adapted by José Antonio Elgorriaga. Illustrated by Edward Nofziger. (c)1970 McKeon Publishing, Inc. Cincinnati: Another Language Press. $2.50 from AIMS International Books at the MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec., '95.

This Spanish version seems identical with the other five in the series, as far as I can see. The pamphlet has a hyperbolic touch. Mrs. Fox puts on her best "fur" for the visit, and Mrs. Stork sharpens her bill before meals!

1970/93 (Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Stork: Chinese). Adapted by Emanuel Calamaro. Illustrated by Edward Nofziger. Translated by May Shen Wang. (c)1970 McKeon Publishing, Inc. Cincinnati: Another Language Press in cooperation with Shen's Books and Supplies. $2.50 from AIMS International Books at the MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec., '95.

See my comments under the Spanish version in the same year.

1970/93 (Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Stork: Japanese). Adapted by Emanuel Calamaro. Illustrated by Edward Nofziger. Translated by Tanya Hyonhye Ko. (c)1970 McKeon Publishing, Inc. Cincinnati: Another Language Press in cooperation with Shen's Books and Supplies. $2.50 from AIMS International Books at the MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec., '95.

See my comments under the Spanish version in the same year.

1970/93 (Mrs. Fox and Mrs. Stork: Korean). Adapted by Emanuel Calamaro. Illustrated by Edward Nofziger. Translated by Naomi Suwa. (c)1970 McKeon Publishing, Inc. Cincinnati: Another Language Press in cooperation with Shen's Books and Supplies. $2.50 from AIMS International Books at the MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec., '95.

See my comments under the Spanish version in the same year.

1970? Aesop's Fables Profusely Illustrated: Large Type Edition Complete and Unabridged. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: A Keith Jennison Book: Franklin Watts, Inc.: A Division of Grolier Incorporated. $2.99 from Pam Sapp, Owensboro, KY, through Ebay, May, '00.

This 8½" x 11" book is fascinating because it is a large-print reprint of the 5" x 7¾" book Aesop's Fables Profusely Illustrated published by many different publishers around 1910. The one I am comparing it with right now is by the World Publishing Company in Cleveland. The only variation I have found from simply reproducing the smaller text proportionally on larger pages comes with the very last page, on which the type is lowered to the bottom of the page with more space around the illustration (of a boar and a man riding a horse). Other publishers of the identical book at about the same time included the Goldsmith Publishing Company, the World Publishing Company, and the World Syndicate Publishing Company. See my comments on all four of those editions under "1910?" This book was discarded by the Owensboro-Daviess County Public Library in Owensboro, Kentucky.

1970? Am grünen Strauch der Welt: Parabel. Von Friedrich Rückert. Federzeichnung nach einem Holzschnitt vom 15. Jahrhundert. Paperbound. Stuttgart: Verlag Herbert H. Hansen. €5 from Antiquariat Delirium, Muenster, August, '06.

At last six years later I have had a chance to enjoy this lovely little -- and apparently quite famous -- parable. A man finds a camel chasing him. He arrives at a well and climbs a tree. Soon he looks down into the well and sees a dragon with mouth open waiting for him to fall. In the meantime, two mice, one white and one black, gnaw away on his tree. At some point their efforts will doom him. In the midst of all this threat, the man sees some berries and enjoys them. Rückert lays out the parable. We are all the man. The dragon is death. The camel is life's "Angst und Not." The mice are day and night. The point: enjoy berries while you can! "Du bist's, der zwischen Tod und Leben/am grünen Strauch der Welt musst schweben." One page has a pleasant little three-tone illustration of the man hanging onto the bush for dear life! 

1970? De Fabeltjeskrant. Text: Leen Valkenier. Puppets: Paul Heineman. M.M. Chanowski Productions. Haarlem: N.V. Uitgererij de Spaarnestad. $1.60 at Books of Imagination, Oct., '91.

Three stories presented through text and photographs of puppets seen on a TV series. The first two are Aesopic: "The Flying Tortoise" and "The Hare and the Frog." The third story seems to be about hamsters in winter. The best of the pictures may be of Jacob the owl on the cover, which is repeated at several points in the book as a logo. Compare Cronica de Fabulandia (1983) for a Spanish offshoot from the same Chanowski TV series.

1970? El León y la Ratita. Cuentos para Colorear. Coleccion Pequeñitos. No author, illustrator, or publisher acknowledged. $.25 at Papeleria Mayor, Porlamar, Venezuela, May, '91. Three extra copies.

A delightful little twelve-page pamphlet with cute art, half in black-and-white and half in color. Ratita Tita plays with Don Leo's tail. Monkey Jaimito plays lookout. Tita at the end plays with an acorn on Leo's back.

1970? Elf Fabeln von la Fontaine.  Übersetzt und nacherzählt von Wilma Lorenz-Flake.  Illustration: M(onique) Gorde.  Hardbound.  Hamburg: Lito-Kinderbücher: Litho-Verlags, Gmbh.  €3.20 from Bücher-Insel, Kassel, through ZVAB, July, '16.

This is Lito's German edition of the French "Fables de la Fontaine," published in about 1970.  As I wrote there, two pages apiece for eleven fables, here presented in German prose.  A pleasing large-format children's book.  Among the illustrations, that of a fisherman in a newspaper hat is perhaps the most charming.  The town and country mice, well contrasted in their clothing, have been enjoying champagne.  This set of Gorde's illustrations traveled extensively!

1970? Fabeln und Erzählungen. Christian Furchtegott Gellert. Daniel Chodowiecki. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Munich: Verlag Lothar Borowsky. DM 12 from Syndikat, Leipzig, July, '96. Extra copy for DM 7 from an unknown source.

I have been reviewing a number of shorter books of Gellert's fables. By comparison, this volume makes several contributions. First, it seems to contain all the fables. They are organized in three books. Secondly, it contains twenty-four Chodowiecki illustrations. So far, I have not met a Gellert illustrator who could pass up "Der Tanzbär" (9)! There is a T of C at the back. It is perhaps an unusual book in that there is nothing but the fables, illustrations, and T of C. A note on the verso of the title-page indicates that the basis for both text and images is a Weimar Jubiläumsausgabe by Hans Timotheus Kroeber in 1915.

1970? Fables de la Fontaine. Illustrées par Monique Gorde. Collection "Belles Années." Printed in Italy. Paris: Éditions Lito. $6 at O'Gara and Wilson, Hyde Park, Sept., '92.

Two pages apiece for eleven fables, given in LaFontaine's original text. A pleasing large-format children's book. Among the illustrations, that of a fisherman in a newspaper hat is perhaps the most charming. The town and country mice, well contrasted in their clothing, have been enjoying champagne.

1970? Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrations: G. Gatti. Printed in Turin. Edition Piccoli: Arnaud. $12 from Yoffees, April, '92.

The seventeen fables chosen give a good index of which of LaFontaine's fables are most popular today. The art is big, bold, and cute. The best of the illustrations are those of the heron passing up a fish jumping out of the water (3) and of the fox chagrined over the stork's vase (11).

1970? Fables de La Fontaine. Hardbound. Printed in Italy. Lausanne?: Editions du Bois-Joli. $6 from Gramp's Attic Books, Ellicott City, MD, Dec., '99.

A lovely find in a friendly bookstore near the site of the first railroad station in the United States. This is a large-format hard-covered book combining La Fontaine's verse, full-page colored illustrations, and smaller black-and-white designs. Fables included are GA, FS, WL, OF, "The Fox and the Goat," FC, TH, FG, WC (unillustrated), BF, LM, AD (unillustrated), and MM. The illustrations are on the simple side and meant for children. The best of them feature a whole round cheese falling from the crow's beak and the tortoise sleeping with legs crossed and arms behind his head. ©Editions du Lion, Lausanne.

1970? Il était une fois…: Les Fables de la Fontaine; Cheveux de Lune.  Jean de La Fontaine; for "Cheveux": Monique Gorde.  Illustrated by Monique Gorde.  Hardbound.  Paris: Collection "Il était une fois….":  Éditions Lito.  €20.40 from Abraxas-Libris, May, ‘21. 

This is our fourteenth book illustrated by Monique Gorde, all but one apparently done by either Lito or its companies in other countries.  Apparently, “Il était une fois…” is the name of the series – and of each book, which gets its identity then from the individual subtitle.  This member of the series brings together seven La Fontaine fables with “Cheveux de la Lune.”  The fables are TH; FG; MM; “The Ass and the Lapdog”; FS; “The Coach and the Fly”; and “The Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit.”  Now it so happens that these seven fables join one other fable (2P) in Lito’s “Les Fables de La Fontaine” in the Collection “Super Luxe” in 1972.  The cover pictures of these two books are in fact exactly the same!  As I wrote there, maybe the most striking figure in the book is the fox thirsting for grapes.  The figures in FS are also strong.

1970? Les Meilleures Fables de Jean de La Fontaine.  Illustrations de R. Perrette.  Pamphlet.  Paris: La Technique du Livre.  $15 from an unknown source, June, '17.

This large (10¾" x 7¼") pamphlet makes for fascinating comparison with another copy -- a copy which I found twenty years ago -- that has distinct differences.  I am guessing that this copy is later.  Its cover has dropped "Jean de" from "La Fontaine" and speaks of "illustrations," not "aquarelles," by R. Perrette.  The cover illustration of GA is now printed, not laid on.  The covers are of slightly stiffer cardboard.  The price seems to be 230 Francs, whereas the earlier copy sold for 25 Francs.  The interior illustrations seem to me less sharp than those in the earlier copy.   The booklet still has fifteen internal full-page illustrations and two black-and-white designs--the latter for the "fin" page and for the last fable, "Le Coche et la Mouche."  Fables included are FS, OF, FC, MSA, GA, "L'Ours et l'Amateur de Jardins," "L'Huitre et les Plaideurs," "Le Laboureur et ses Enfants," OR, WL, "Les Animaux Malades de la Peste," TH, "Le Petit Poisson et le Pecheur," MM, and "Le Chat, la Belette et le Petit Lapin."  The bear letting go of the huge stone above the gardener may still make for the best illustration.  Verse texts from La Fontaine.

1970? Proverbs of La Fontaine (Hebrew).  Illustrations by Dedign?  Hardbound.  Tel Aviv: Avner Publishing.  $20 from Mauricio Yeger, Ramat Gan, Israel, through Ebay, Feb., '14.

This is one of the most colorful Hebrew books of fables that I have found.  It is a shame that I can discover so little bibliographical information about the book.  The strong colored illustrations begin on the cover with OF, and they continue to the back cover with FC, where the fox even holds a flower for the crow.  This FC fox is also on the title-page.  Other colored illustrations include "The Wolf and the Fox Before the Monkey Judge"; GA; GGE (two); MM (two); FS; MSA; and WL.  Pages with colored illustrations have blank versos.  The interior pages are coming loose from the spine.  8½" x 11".  Unpaginated.

1970? The Changing Bat.  Rabbi Berechiah ha-Nakdan; Editor: Rina Asachyak.  Illustrated by Moses Van Dyke.  Paperbound.  Bnei Brak, Israel.  Publisher not acknowledged.  $10 from Dr. Baruch Falach, Netanya, Israel, May, '12.

This is a 16-page pamphlet presenting one fable, the fable of the bat that changed sides during the battle of the birds versus the beasts.  The cover and the identical large illustration several pages from the beginning show the bat alone while the birds and animals fight each other with long spears and poles.  The bat appears to be attacking with the animals in a black-and-white illustration close to the center of this pamphlet, but then, in a two-page full-colored illustration at the center, the bat is with birds attacking fleeing animals.  In a final colored illustration, the birds point angrily at the bat, as do the animals on the facing page.  Perhaps the best illustration is the final one, as a chagrined bat is rejected by both groups at once.  The front cover offers an arch with two foxes that suggests a series of stories or fables, since there are no foxes in this story.  The back cover features a dressed fox pointing to a chalkboard.  Might that board be listing other stories in the series?  My Hebrew-reading associate points out that "ha-Nakdan" means "the punctuator or grammarian."

1970? The Hunter, the Fox, and the Tiger (Cover: A Fable). Text by Viola Sperka and Aesop. Illustration and Design by Volney Croswell and Robert Sutter. Paperbound. Published & Printed by McGraw-Phillips. $15 from Oak Knoll Books, August, '02. Extra copy without the envelope for $12.50 from Alibris, June, '03.

I presume that this was an advertising gift from McGraw-Phillips. It is a clever little booklet 5¼" x 6¼" and 16 pages long. The cleverness starts on the cover, which shows three intersecting tracks and labels them "vulpes fulva," "homo sapiens," and "felis tigris." Clever designs enhance the text along the way. The verse rhymes make for fun. The hunter sets a trap for the fox with some succulent meat. (Whether the fox takes the bait is not clear to me.) A tiger smells the bait and jumps in. "The Hunter heard the crash, leaped in,/and there to his surprise/He found the greedy Tiger who/effected his demise." The last bit of cleverness is the moral: "if you be/Tiger, Fox, or Man,/Devise a moral/as you can." The good copy is in its original envelope with a return address for McGraw-Phillips on the back

1970? Three Persian Fables.  Pictures by Diderica Elliott.  Hardbound.  Printed in USA.  Design Group, Inc.  $25 from Cover to Cover Book Co, Mamaroneck, NY, through ABE, July, '03.

This is a book into which some care has gone.  It is landscape-formatted with a repeating print on its cover, perhaps showing a royal scene with servants, vines, lotus blossoms, and a story-teller.  A new young king meets his court, including the one he takes for useless, the story-teller.  "The Three Fish" represent the standard story, with two nice touches I have not noticed before.  One is that the third fish cries.  "But the tears of fish are invisible in water."  The young king says that each of us can see himself in one of those three fishes, but the story-teller objects that the third fish at least saw her own folly, but many people neither see it nor realize it, like the goose in the second fable.  This is the goose who mistakes the moon's reflection for a fish three times and, because of her mistake, never fishes again, so as not to be deceived again.  The third story is of the pigeons who do not listen to the warning raven the first time, and so are captured in the net.  They do listen the second time, when he counsels them to fly up all together and carry the net away to his friend the mouse.  The pasted-in illustrations are lavish but not necessarily narrative.  The three fish of different colors and textures are striking.  The papers used here have lovely textures.  This book has spent a long time in a musty place.

1970? Vier Fabeln. Hans Demiron. #514 in a limited edition. Paperbound. Krefeld: Greifenhorst Druck #7: Scherpe Verlag. DM 40 from Ahrens & Hamacher Antiquariat, Düsseldorf, July, '97. 

"Fabeln" may be used loosely in this book's title. These are four stories on ancient themes, each with an impressive full-page illustration done on brown paper. The form is verse, or at least broken lines. The first piece is about Paris: "Eine Tolle Bescherung," something like "What a mess!" or "A fine kettle of fish!" To tell the truth, I find nothing new here. We watch Paris making his fatal mistake. Second comes "Diogenes, ich will nicht stören." Alexander talks with Diogenes in his barrel. Diogenes convinces Alexander that might needs truth, but truth does not need might. The last lines say that Alexander admitted the next day that, were he not already Alexander, he would be glad to trade with Diogenes. In the third piece, Lucullus and Brillat-Savarin discuss what one might call the philosophy of gustation. I do not know what this piece is about. Fourth is "Neptun im Käfig." This story asks the question--and perhaps many more--"Can a god be up-to-date?" Did Demiron himself do the four illustrations? Forty-seven pages.

 

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1971

1971 A Treasury of Jewish Fables. Translated by Gerald Friedlander. Illustrated by Beatrice Hirschfeld. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Oceanside, NY: Blue Star Book Club. See 1917/71.

1971 A Type Specimen of Baskerville: Several Fables of Aesop. Illustrated by Gertrud Nelson. From the translation of S.A. Handford. Limited edition of 975. Nevada City, CA: Harold Berliner, printer. $15 from Anthony Garnett, St. Louis, March, '95. Extra copy for $10.51 from Jennifer Flanagan, Berkeley, CA, Oct., '02.

Six fables from Handford's Penguin translation give Berliner a chance to show off specimens of his lovely type, specifically 12 point Roman, Bold, and Italic and 8 point, 10 point, and 12 point Roman with Italic. Wonderful, strong three-color illustrations (orange, yellow, and blue/gray) set off the stories in a Santa Fe style. The strongest of the illustrations is that for SW. A rare story is the last, "The Lion and the Ass." I was so lucky to find this book among many private press books! It is precisely in order to bring together such rare books as this that I collect fable editions.

1971 Aesop in the Courts. By Aron Steuer. Dust jacket. NY: Law-Arts Publishers, Inc. $12.50 by mail from the publishers, Nov., '92. Extra copy without dustjacket but in a larger book for $6.25 from Booksmith, Oak Park, June, '93.

Humorous anecdotes that appeared as a column "of not quite truth and not quite fiction" in the New York Law Journal. The name "Aesop" came when the author read a collection of an Old English newspaper column called "Forensic Fables." All the fables in this edition start on the right hand page. They generally conclude in a page or two. The best of the early ones I read are "The Eager Lawyer and the Stolid Witness" (11) and "The Police Inspector and the Judge's Wife" (15). See the second volume under 1971/81.

1971 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Gaynor Chapman. Dust jacket. New York: Atheneum. $3.69.

About a dozen fables with rather simplistic large-scale illustrations. It is hard for me to see much use for them.

1971 Aesop's Fables. Retold by Alan Doan, illustrated by Fritz Kredel. Dust jacket. Kansas City: Hallmark Editions. $5 at Erasmus Books, South Bend, May, '95.

Attractive.  The pictures are cute, but I am not sure which I could use.  The narratives are okay.  The black-background frontispiece is very attractive.  There are unusual colors in the TMCM illustration (4).  After seeing this book almost never, I found it twice within two weeks.  I have another copy with a white-backgrounded frontispiece.

1971 Aesop's Fables. Alan Doan. Illustrated by Fritz Kredel. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Kansas City: Hallmark Editions. $3 from Harold's, Saint Paul, May, '95.

I already had a copy of this book with a frontispiece whose background is black when I found this copy whose background is white! The book is otherwise identical. Might the printer have had a bad day and forgotten to add that black background? As I mention there, this is an attractive little book. The pictures are cute, but I am not sure which I could use. The narratives are okay. There are unusual colors in the TMCM illustration (4). After seeing this book almost never, I found it twice within two weeks. 

1971 Aesop's Fables. by Karel Teissig. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Great Britain. London/NY: Franklin Watts. $6.50 from Advanced Book Exchange, Jan., '01.

Here is a remnant of the 60's and 70's. This is a landscape-formatted book with a two-page spread for each of seventeen fables; "Mercury and the Woodman" (26) gets double-length, including two full-page illustrations, and MSA (40) gets triple-length. The texts, to judge from the first three, are slightly modified versions of James' fables. The boy who cries "Wolf!" does it with success only "once or twice" here (10) as opposed to "twice or thrice" in James' version. In each case, the right-hand page is a full-page collage of colorful materials presenting the story or at least one dramatic scene from it. The illustration for DS (7) includes several different colorful illustrations of food. The illustration for "The Drowning Boy" (23) is good old-time fun: all we see of the boy is a pair of arms reaching out from the water. Do not miss "The Bald Knight" (31).

1971 Aesop's Fables in Verse. By Warren Liddle. Illustrated by Ruth Woyciesjes. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Schenectady, NY: Riedinger & Riedinger. $12.50 from Wonderland Books, El Cerrito, CA, through Amazon.com, August, '01.

Here is a small-press version of which I had not known earlier. It includes nine illustrations in the text and one of TH on the dust-jacket. Perhaps the best of the illustrations is TMCM on 67. I read perhaps the first third of these verse fables. Several fables are presented in surprising, new ways. DM, e.g., seems to be less about selfish hoarding of what we cannot use and more about being rudely awakened (4). The cow here is able to eat placidly around the dog! In "The Nurse and the Wolf" (11) an older nurse recommends to a young wife that she use the wolf-ploy to get a child to mind. "The Angler and the Little Fish" is not about taking what you have available now but rather about being caught by a bait (18). The young man who sees the swallow still has some money left on this November day but squanders it because he hears a swallow's summer song early in the day (21). A crane who has to hear a peacock's insults consoles himself by gazing into a keg where he has hoarded up savings (23). This book needed an editor. Thus there is a "Forward" (v), and we find "dreampt" (4), "its" as the contraction of noun and verb (9, 16), "once lay a golden egg" in the past tense (10), and "wizzard" (10). There is a T of C at the front.

1971 Androcles and the Lion. Elizabeth and Gerald Rose. First edition. Dust jacket. London: Faber and Faber. £2 at Henry Pordes Books in London, Aug., '88.

A great find in a store on Charing Cross Road that did not think they had any Aesop. The faces are excellently portrayed throughout. The story uses "thumbs up" well; it serves rightly in the cover picture. Excellent condition.

1971 Animal Folk Tales. By Barbara Ker Wilson. Illustrated by Mirko Hanak. First published and (c)1968 by The Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd. Printed in Czechoslovakia. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. See 1968/71.

1971 Antike Fabeln. Eingeleitet und neu Übertragen von Ludwig Mader. Mit 97 Bildern des Ulmer Aesop von 1476. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Zurich: Buchclub Ex Libris. DM 25 from Antiquariat Manfred Henke, Berlin, August, '95. 

This book reproduces Mader's Artemis edition of 1951 of the same title. It seems very similar to Irmscher's 1978 edition from the Aufbau Verlag's "Bibliothek der Antike" series. It lists, for example, some of the same authors on its title-page. The translations are, however, different, and this volume adds 97 Ulm woodcuts. Mader's introduction is over thirty pages long. There is a T of C at the end. This volume does not have the AI that makes Irmscher's volume so helpful. It also lacks the helpful numbering that one finds in Irmscher's edition.

1971 Bewick's Select Fables. With Engraved Illustrations of the Original Woodcuts. One of a boxed set of small books. Printed in Hong Kong. Limited (?) edition of 1971. Franklin, NH: The Hillside Press. See 1965/71.

1971 Chinese Fables & Parables: A Catalogus (Cover: Asian Monographs: Chinese Fables).  Wolfram Eberhard.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Taipei, Taiwan: The Orient Cultural Service.  $16.70 from Gotcha by the Books, Camira, Australia, through Biblio.com, Dec., '19.

Here is a curious book with a beautiful dust-jacket cover illustration suggesting a woman flying. The spine has yet a third title: "Fables and Parables: Tales of China."  The first unusual feature is that the book really is a catalogue of over 500 different stories, each told in a concise paragraph.  The second unusual feature is that the book is typewritten.  The foreword points out that these fables are culled from modern publications.  The Institute of International Studies at Cal Berkeley did the typing.  I moved into the book curious to see how many Western fables might found their way into this collection.  The answer is: none.  A random sampling shows the stories to be charming and fully in the tradition I have come to expect from Chinese fables.  There is an extensive AI at the end.

1971 Der Spatz in der Hand: Fabeln und Verse. Wolf Dietrich Schnurre. Mit 75 Zeichnungen des Autors. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Munich/Vienna: Langen-Müller Verlag. $35 from Antiquariat Wolfgang Jeske, Berlin, May, '99.

This 232-page little book is organized into seven chapters offering ironic categories like "The Dowry of Innocence," "Life's Slaps on the Cheek," "The Eternal Values," and "God's Difficult Position." I will offer comments here from Andreas Gommermann and save some examples of my reading for my copy of the second edition in 1973. Schnurre's fables are short, pointed, aphoristic, satirical. The dust-jacket speaks aptly of digs at culture and politics. Yes, this book is "ein vergnüglicher Spiegel für selbstkritische Zeitgenossen." Is the "Spatz in der Hand" really, asks the cover caricature, a "bird in the brain"? Marriage is a particular target of Schnurre's satire. Typical political satire comes in a fable like "A Contribution to Learning about Colors" (156). The squirrel is called before a tribunal to account for its color. When he challenges the judge fox for having the same color, the fox responds that he has long since distanced himself from his fur. The point of that story might best be expressed "Day before yesterday brown, yesterday red, and today black." (And tomorrow green?) "Parallel Tastes" (158) shows that the ruling party and the opposition are the same under the surface: a flea bites one from each party, shakes his head, and declares that he cannot find a difference. "Triftiger Pazifismus" (152) criticizes the mendacity of government. The hare is brought to court before the judge fox for not responding when he is called into military service. "You refuse to defend your country!" "Against whom?" "Those who threaten the peace." "How could I dare to raise my hand against you?!" Schnurre employs a delightful range of characters from Greek and Christian mythology, various professions, unusual animals, daily objects, and concepts. Andreas points out aptly that an index of individual fables is missing; it would be very helpful. The illustrations are Schnurre's own caricatures: always fun, often helpful for getting the direction from which the criticism comes.

1971 Die Fabel. Geschichte, Struktur, Didaktik. Reinhard Dithmar. No illustrations. Paperback. UTB. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh. Gift of Franz Kuhn, Sept., '88.

Here is a great resource! Dithmar offers a few pages on each of the major fabulists of the classical and German traditions. Sections on fable analysis and teaching are followed by a good bibliography. I would like to work through this book and Dithmar's Fabeln, Parabeln und Gleichnisse (1970).

1971 Disney's Wonderful World of Knowledge. Volume 14. Updated and enlarged from Arnoldo Mondadori Editore edition in Italian. Copyright by Walt Disney Productions. Danbury Press: Grolier Enterprises. $1.95 at Recycle Books and Records, San Jose, Aug., '89.

Nearly identical, down to page numbers, with Los Mas Importantes Cuentos (1973). Six fables, introduced here by a picture of Aesop without a name or identification. And what is that drunk mouse doing illustrating LM? Ducks do not appear here, as they did in the Spanish edition, to illustrate "The Peasant and His Sons." The spine is injured.

1971 Domestic Fables. Barriss Mills. Dust jacket. New Rochelle, NY: The Elizabeth Press. $8 at Dundee Books, Nov., '92.

This is a good book of generally page-length poems. I enjoy the poems, like "Letters" on 71. One poem is titled "Fables" (58). It celebrates two famous legends. My purpose in including this book in the collection is to stop readers who hope that there are some regular old Aesopic fables here.

1971 fables choisies de La Fontaine I. Livres I à VI. Nouveaux Classiques Larousse. Notes by Claude Dreyfus. Paperback. Printed in France. Paris: Nouveaux Classiques Larousse: Librairie Larousse. 85p from Bookside, Leeds, July, '98.

A first printing of this typical French graduate student text, complete with possible exam questions. See my comments on the later printing listed under 1971/72.

1971 fables choisies de La Fontaine II. Livres VII à XII. Nouveaux Classiques Larousse. Notes by Claude Dreyfus. Paperback. Printed in France. Paris: Nouveaux Classiques Larousse: Librairie Larousse. $1.50 for the 1971 printing from Adams, San Diego, Aug., '93. $2.50 for the 1972 printing from Powell's, Portland, July, '93. $.95 for the 1977 printing at Powell's, Portland, Aug., '87.

A typical French graduate student text, complete with possible exam questions. A few black-and-white illustrations from Doré, Grandville, and Rabier. I am fortunate to have found three different printings. The title-page format on the last differs somewhat from that on the earlier two; otherwise it is hard for me to decipher a difference. AI of Volumes I-II on 156-7.

1971 Fairy Tales Sticker Fun: Press-out, Stick on, Color. Large pamphlet. Printed in USA. Racine, WI: Whitman: Western Publishing Company. $5 from an unknown source, August, '00.

There is one fable, TH, among the fairy tales in this book. For each fairy tale's page, there are about eight items on separate pages with lickable adhesive backs and pre-cut edges. So for TH there are, at the book's very center, two faces, two hats, two flowers, a lion's t-shirt, and a victory cup to press out, lick, and stick. Then the rest of the picture is ready for coloring. Excellent condition.

1971 Favole al Telefono. Gianni Rodari. Paperbound. Turin: Gli Struzzi 14: Einaudi. 12000 Lire from Porta Portese flea market, August, '99.

I have learned a little in my attempt at last to catalogue this book found years ago. Rodari was perhaps the most beloved and accomplished Italain children's book author of the twentieth century. I found a review of this book in Italian and will attach a very rough Google translation. Apparently the fables are fanciful, engaging and tend toward healing and unification. I wish I could say more! My Italian is only good enough to bargain for books like this in the flea market! This seems to be the 24th printing in 1993. 

1971 Favole di Esopo. Scelte da Louis Untermeyer. Illustrate da A. e M. Provensen. Tradotte da Quirino Maffi. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore. Italian 1971 reproduction of 1965 Untermeyer Aesop's Fables: Western Publishing Co. See 1965/71.

1971 feldman fieldmouse: a fable. By Nathaniel Benchley. Drawings by Hilary Knight. Dust jacket. NY: Harper & Row. $18 from Greg Williams, May, '94.

A fine ninety-six-page novellette about young Lonny's friendship with Fendall and his spirited uncle Feldman. Feldman becomes enraptured with experiencing a moon dance that involves wonderful leaps into the air. He heard about it from the rabbits. I think I have seen some of their dance in the Jesuit Garden . . . . This is a wonderful little book.

1971 Fuzzies: A Folk Fable for All Ages. Richard Lessor. Design by Patricia Ellen Ricci. Niles, IL: (c)Argus Communications. $4 at Renaissance Airport, Oct., '95. Extra copy for $2.50 from the Book Shop, Burbank, Feb., '97.

This short book is vintage "early 70's" material. People in a valley removed "just far enough from the Inter-State Expressway" used to enjoy life while they gave and received fuzzies (5). These are perfectly round, warm, soft rolly-polly little creatures (12). This story clearly comes from the "halcyon days of yore" (3). Selfishness and fear led to a perceived shortage of fuzzies; hoarding fuzzies ultimately brought the loss of innocence and the onslaught of modernity, including six-lane roads, housing projects, tourists, and being very busy. Appropriately, this book had belonged to a Sunday school.

1971 Green Beginning Black Ending: Fables. Michael Bullock. Hardbound. Queen Charlotte Islands, BC: The Sono Nis Press. $10 from The Bookbox Company, Black Creek, BC, through ABE, Jan., '00.

This is a series of creative prose narrative pieces with a strong emphasis on metamorphosis. I made my way through about half of the first piece, "The Green Girl," as well as through a number of shorter pieces. The pieces I read have a strong sensuous and erotic quality, and are full of surprises. One can get a sense of how traditional fable materials are touched on here by reading "Raven and Fir Tree" (115), one of the shortest pieces. The tree laughs, flies up toward the threatening crow, and pursues him. Later "the fir tree could be seen sailing serenely through the air upside-down, with the raven perched cheerfully on one of its roots, cawing delightedly at this new and gratifying mode of locomotion."

1971 I.A. Krylov: Basni.  Illustrated by N. Tseytlin.  Paperbound.  Moscow: Detskay Literatura.  $10 from an unknown source, July, '17.

This pamphlet of 32 unpaginated pages almost replicates an edition of 1969 but adds to it a front and back cover.  The inside back cover here illustrates what was there a text without illustration.  The cover here features a crow in a tree and four cameos of principal animal characters from the fables.  The verso of the front-cover is a gouache of Krylov in his red and black striped robe composing with a writing quill.  Except for the date on the title-page, I note only one change.  The young woman eating grapes facing the full-page illustration of FG has disappeared!  Only the baskets of freshly plucked grapes remain!  Now what had been the cover there is the title-page here, and it still has a small illustration of a monkey holding a mirror.  The illustrations are strong and colorful.  Often there is an echo of the facing full-page illustration on the text page.  For example, a female monkey points to a mirror on the right-hand page while a male bear looks on in the full-page illustration to the left.  8⅜" x 10⅞"

1971 Kindererzählungen, Märchen und Fabeln Russischer Klassiker. Translated by Manfred von Busch. Illustrations by I. Archangelskaja, A. Laptjew, G. Nikolskij, and E. Ratschew. Hardbound. Berlin: Alfred Holz Verlag. DM 3 from Zentralantiquariat, Leipzig, July, '95.

Some sixty to seventy percent of this book comes from L.N. Tolstoy. Other writers include Garin, Garschin, Gorki, Mamin-Sibirjak, A.N. Tolstoy, Turgeniev, and -- especially for fables -- Uschinsky. Many traditional fables appear here among the twenty-six offerings from Leo Tolstoy and the seventeen from Uschinsky. This is a pleasant book to read. Both Tolstoy and Uschinski offer a pleasing mixture of mostly traditional fables with several that are new to me. These include "Der Affe und die Erbsen" (73), "Das Eichhörnchen und der Wolf" (83), "Der Elefant" (90), and "Die Eule und der Hase" (92) from Tolstoy and "Die Gänse" (130), "Die Bärenfalle" (131), "Der Adler und die Katze" (133), "Der Rabe und die Elster" (145), and "Der Rabe und der Krebs" (146) from Uschinsky. The illustrations are surprisingly well done and lively. For me the best of them is "Der Affe und die Erbsen" (73). There is a T of C on 154-55. 

1971 La Fontaine. Illustrations de G. Gatti. Milan: Editions Piccoli. $24 from Yoffees, April, '92. Extra copy for $6 from Pierre Cantin, Montreal, Feb., '02.

Includes the fables presented in the Arnaud edition (1970?) among its forty-three. The art is again big and bold, and the additional illustrations here seem to me livelier than the repeaters. The best among them are of the council of rats (8-9), the fox and the goat (10-11), the two goats (24-25), and the fox and the wolf (92-93). There is a delightful world-seeking rat with his luggage looking at his first oyster on 16-17. AI at the front. The extra copy changes only the verso of the last printed page, namely to add the information that the book was printed in July, 1971. I have accordingly changed the date of the listing from "1970?" to "1971." The extra copy is in poorer condition, with a taped binding.

1971 Lamb, Said the Lion, I Am Here. By Mark Taylor. Woodcuts by Anne Siberell. Dust jacket. Hardbound. San Carlos, CA: Golden Gate Junior Books. $4.20 from Gryphon Bookshops, NY, July, '98? 

This landscape-formatted book for children is probably not a fable book, but it touches so much on the fable world that it is worth keeping in the collection. The animals declare a three-day truce, but their tendencies push them to resume life as it has been, with the stronger eating and plundering the weaker. As they move to the end of the their truce, a boy appears and shows them what is different in his life from theirs: he can laugh. He makes clear to them that they need and should not attack each other when they are not hungry. The atmosphere and the behaviors change for the better, though changing the old patterns is hard. The effect of this truce and its learning is still visible today: the animals do not attack unless hungry, and humans are still the only laughers in the world. The woodcuts are large and pleasant. Is the woodcut facing the zebra-page supposed to be as blurred as it is?

1971 Les Plus Belles Fables de La Fontaine. Jean de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Maurice Tapiero. Paperbound. Paris: Le Petit Ménestrel: Disques de Adès. $20 from Robin Michel, Santa Clarita, CA, through eBay, March, '11.

This oversized 20-page pamphlet is stapled into the ALB-6034 album containing a 33 rpm record of the same title spoken by Francois Perier, Jacques Fabbri, and Pierre Bertin with music by Rameau and Couperin. Together the two form a "Livre-Disque." Like the record, the booklet presents fifteen fables, illustrated in a variety of styles by Tapiero. Among the best of the illustrations are 2P (16) and OR (20). I will keep the record with the book among the books rather than among the audio-visual materials.

1971 Les Plus Belles Fables de la Fontaine: 20 Fables Choisies. Diethard Lübke. Various illustrators. Paperbound. 1. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterwegs Neusprachliche Bibliothek: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg. Gift of Klaus Reinhard, August, '02.

Klaus gave me this lovely little booklet. I have thought it identical with one I had already found, published with the same bibliographical information in 1974. However, I discover now that it is the first edition from 1971. It has a slightly larger page format and a squared, glued binding rather than the stapled binding of the later version. I will repeat my comments from that edition. Before the fables start in this 80-page booklet there is a helpful two-page "Bestiaire des Fables," picturing various animals who will appear in these fables. Vocabularies for individual fables then drive students back to the bestiary. About ten full-page black-and-white illustrations are taken from Oudry, Grandville, and Doré. For each fable, there is a text, extensive vocabulary help, and "Indications pour l'explication de la fable." Sometimes there is also a "Texte supplémentaire," like another version of the same fable.

1971 Lions and Lobsters and Foxes and Frogs. Fables from Aesop by Ennis Rees. Drawings by Edward Gorey. Signed by Gorey. First edition. Dust jacket. Reading, MA: Young Scott. $25 at Gotham Book Mart, NY, April, '97. Extra copies of first edition in dust jacket: signed for $15 at Gotham, April, '97; for $22.50 at Turtle Island, Aug., '93; and for $15 at Adobe, San Francisco, Jan., '91.

First found in 1991 after years of searching! A wonderful, witty presentation combining Rees' tellings (from his earlier Fables from Aesop, 1966) and Gorey's pictures. Do not miss "The Impatient Fox." There is always something to laugh over here.

1971 Marcus Gheeraerts The Elder of Bruges, London, and Antwerp. Edward Hodnett. Plates from Marcus Gheeraerts. Hardbound. Utrecht: Haentjens Dekker & Gumbert. NLG 65 from Antiquariaat A. Kok & Zn., Amsterdam, March, '98.

Here is a lovely study of Gheeraerts and his work. Here one finds 86 pages of tight information and criticism and then 62 photographic plates of Gheeraerts' work. The frontispiece is the title-page of De Warachtighe Fabulen der Dieren with not a misshapen Aesop but Orphic man, a symbol of dominion. A T of C at the beginning gives a sense of the work. Hodnett looks first at the shape of Gheeraerts' career, then at his paintings and single etchings. Chapter IV, "Books Illustrated," brings him in 1567 to De Warachtighe Fabulen der Dieren, which he calls "the main achievement in the long career of Marcus Gheeraerts" (31). For this work, Gheeraerts produced some 107 illustrations, which appeared with small margins. This "is a book of pictures -- not illustrations of De Dene's earnest homilies but of the old stories as Marcus might have known them as a boy. . . now brought to life among the Flemish scenes in which he perhaps always imagined them taking place" (33). Gheeraerts added eighteen new illustrations and a title-page for Esbatement moral des animaux, an anonymous French version of the Dutch Fabulen der Dieren which appeared in Antwerp in 1578. Hodnett finds these new etched illustrations indistinguishable in manner from the earlier ones and thus clearly done by Gheeraerts. Mythologica Ethica in 1579, by Arnold Freitag, has the same 125 illustrations. Gheeraerts' etchings may still be in existence; they were last sold publically in 1868. Gheeraerts' animals are well done, "yet human beings clearly interest Gheeraerts more than animals do" (35). Hodnett examines the influence of Gheeraerts' Aesopic illustrations, emphasizing such major figures as Ogilby's Francis Clein, Wenceslaus Hollar, and Francis Barlow. Hollar and Barlow owe him a great deal simply as etchers; but beyond that "they could not have helped learning a good deal both from his technique and from his fresh outlook on the craft of illustration" (40). His achievement? "He focuses the intensity of interest, as with a burning glass, on the central dramatic event and then spreads the interest on a lower scale of values throughout the design" (53). "His illustrations are as fresh and appealing today. . . because his art always serves a narrative function, not a decorative one, or for all the intent of his authors, a religious or a merely didactic one" (54). Final chapters and sections deal with other works, an index, and a list of the appended photographic plates. Of these, #5 through 26 are from Fabulen der Dieren, while #38 through 41 are from Esbatement. Lovely! 

1971 Modern Fables Rendered in Verse. By Nolie Mumey. With Illustrations Done by Virginia Hardin Stearns. Hardbound. Denver: The Range Press. $0.89 from L. Sharpe, Arvada, CO, through eBay, April, '09.

I just googled Nolie Mumey and found that he was a prolific writer--and surgeon, aviator, philosopher, and humanitarian. He died in 1984. In 1987, Norma Mumey (his daughter perhaps?) wrote a life of him once offered on Amazon.com but apparently now out of print. Some of his volumes seem to be selling on the net for several hundred dollars. My cost of less than a dollar for this book testifies to the thrill of shopping on Ebay! The book itself is a curious production. Its cover is partly florid cloth with a sticky embossed tape glued on declaring "Fables." The spine reads only "Fables" and "Mumey." The five points at which the binding is sewn are marked by long cuts into the page that resemble worm-holes. The printing is variable and thus sometimes faint. The spine is starting to disintegrate. There are 169 thick pages after a beginning T of C that lists the seventy-seven verse fables. I read the first ten or fifteen fables. They represent standard "peasant wisdom." Readers are warned to watch out for traps, to avoid greed, not to play with fire, to resist envy. "Man and Horse" (37) fleshes out the proverb about looking a gift horse in the mouth. In some fables like the book's last one, the title and illustration both refer to an image, but the verse simply tells a story (168-69). The illustration shows a man and woman holding hands; it reads "There is a lid which will fit almost every pot." The verse of "Lid and Pot" tells of the not-popular girl in a family meeting an ungainly man at church. They fall in love and are married.

1971 Quellen heiterer Tierweisheit. Eugen Hettinger. J. Tannheimer. 1. Auflage. Spiral-bound. St. Gallen, Switzerland: Verlag Leobuchhandlung St. Gallen. €2 from Sebastiansplatzbücher, Munich, August, '07.

I thought that I recognized this little spiral-bound book of "thoughts and poems." It turns out that it is uniform in format with Springs of Animal Wisdom, published by Marcel Schurman Company in 1986. While the selection of authors for the two language groups is somewhat different, the people responsible for choice of texts and for layout of the book are the same, as is the place of printing. That English book included two reflections developed from LaFontaine: OF and DS. I find at least four fable references here in the German book. A piece from Goethe speaks of the frogs' dream in winter under the surface of frozen ponds: they will sing like nightingales. Spring comes, the frogs emerge -- and croak as they always have. Lark asks cuckoo "Why are not well travelled storks smarter than we?" "They are meant to prove to us that lots of travel does not make stupid people smarter" (von Hagedorn). Baboon asks some kind of pig (Maskenschwein) "How can someone be so ugly?" Stork looks at him and says "Someone can!" (Presberg). Toad crawls wheezing to the moles' heap, looks around thoughtfully, swells with pride, and says "My, how huge the broad world is!" (Seidel). I see now that this last story was also in the English edition! The art work is pleasant and imaginative. Many of the illustrations and some of the texts are identical. The illustration on the cover of each book shows up inside the other book. Aesop reaches into a lot of places!

1971 Satirix: La revue qu'on ne jette pas… Mensuel Humoristique, Novembre 1971, No. 2. Newspaper. Printed in Montrouge. Published in Paris. FF 65 from Librairie de l'avenue Henry Veyrier, Saint-Ouen, August, '01.

Here is a chance item that I picked up at a favorite bookstore by a favorite artist. It is a monthly satirical newspaper that in this issue features "43 fablettes de jean effel." Many border on fables, as when the tortoise says to her child "Don't drag your feet" (2) or when one fly on the ceiling says to the other "Absurd hypothesis; if the earth were round, in the other hemisphere we would walk with our feet below us!" Others are maybe just good fun, like the female rabbit saying to the male "Not in front of the little one; she still believes that babies are produced from a hat" (7). A typical fable-scene of the eagle carrying off the lamb (11) leads one larger sheep to say to another "The best go to heaven…." La Fontaine comes in for one specific parody (14), as the ass kicks a book of Perrault and says (I think!) "If only 'Skin of the Ass' had been recited to me…."

1971 Stories, Fables & Other Diversions. Howard Nemerov. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Boston: Godine. $6 from Imagination Books, Silver Spring, MD, Jan., '03.

There are eleven short stories here. I have read three. Nemerov is better remembered as a poet, I believe, and these are apparently sallies into another form. It is a stretch of my imagination, at least, to call what I have read "fables." "The Twelve and the One" reports on an eerie visit of twelve Jews from Trent to the Pope to confront him with Christian injustice. Nemerov's story suggests, I believe, how unjust Christians have been but also how difficult it is to set right a wrong done so long ago. One has only impotent words. "The Executive" offers an encounter between a supermarket manager and a somewhat incompetent worker. A berating of the latter by the former turns into an apotheosis, but the manager fires the worker a week later. There is something critical and even cynical in Nemerov's satire, I think. "The Idea of a University" is a salvo against the inhumanity of what universities have become. This university includes a "model slum" and a brainwashing center: all for research purposes, of course! 

1971 Story Theatre. Adapted for the Stage by Paul Sills. From Stories in the Grimm Brothers' Collection and Aesop's Fables. NY: Samuel French. Gift of George Drance.

"Venus and the Cat," "Two Crows," and GGE. The last of these three grows to great proportions in the play. The first has a nice touch: the man throws up and at the end kicks the cat, which has been transformed back into her old shape. "Two Crows" is fun and basic Aesop: the suggester-crow gets the oyster dropped by the other who wants to crack it open. Maybe a casual reference in a lecture?

1971 Tales from India. Retold by Asha Upadhyay. Illustrated by Nickzad Nodjoumi. NY: Random House. $4.50 from Powell's, Portland, March, '96.

A very nice collection of ten Panchatantra stories. Several are particularly well told, including "Dhobi and His Donkey" (and the lion's skin, 25) and "The Brahman, the Goat, and the Hungry Thieves" (40). In the latter, the thieves convinced the Brahman that the goat he was carrying had to be a "wicked goblin," since it allegedly appeared to them as a dog, calf, and donkey, respectively. The mice here were alleged to eat a heavy iron scale, and they did it overnight! Now the two friends drink tea together and laugh over their old mutual tricks (17). This version names the three fish well (13): "Plan-Ahead," "Think-Fast," and "Wait-And-See." In "Little Mouse-Girl" (45), the daughter herself rejected each of the candidates, and the father asked each "Is there anyone more powerful than you?" The girl had been a mouse long before and was happy to be changed back.

1971 The Arbuthnot Anthology of Children's Literature. Fourth Edition. May Hill Arbuthnot, Dorothy Broderick, Shelton Root, Jr., Mark Taylor, and Evelyn Wenzel. Various illustrators. Revised by Zena Sutherland. NY: Lothrop, Lee and Shepard Company. See 1961/71/76.

1971 The Around-the-Year Storybook. Kathryn Jackson. Pictures by J.P. Miller. NY: Golden Press. Western Publishing Co. See 1952/71.

1971 The Black Sheep and Other Fables. Augusto Monterroso. Translated from the Spanish by Walter I. Bradbury. Illustrations taken from Dover's 1800 Woodcuts by Thomas Bewick and His School (1962). First edition. Dust jacket. Garden City: Doubleday and Co. $10.60 from Bill and Barbara Yoffee, Oct., '91. Extras with dust jacket for $5.50 from Haunted House, Iowa City, April, '93, and without dust jacket for $3.95 from Crescent City Books, New Orleans, Dec., '92.

A great book, starting from the lovely design embossed on the cover and repeated on the title page. Monterroso has healthy, sardonic fun with Aesop and lots of others in these forty-four stories. "The Monkey Satirist" (17) gives the key. Other excellent representatives are "The Owl Who Wanted to Save Humanity" (37) and "David's Sling" (91). For quick fun, try "The Black Sheep" (29), "The Lightning Bolt" (49), "The True Frog" (63), "The Donkey and the Flute" (85), and "The Fabulist and the Critics" (105). Ulysses traveled whenever Penelope wove.

1971 The Conference of the Birds: A Sufi Fable by Farid ud-Din-Attar: A Philosophical Religious Poem in Prose. Rendered into English from the Literal and Complete French Translation of Garcia de Tassy by C.S. Nott. Paperbound. Boulder, CO: The Clear Light Series: Shambhala. $3.50 from Jackson Street Booksellers, Omaha, Jan., '95.

This 120 page paperback presenting a beast epic about wisdom begins with a long Islamic invocation. There is a summons to each of the birds. Hoopoe then announces a movement to go to the king of birds Simurgh; he summons all the birds to go. He then talks to each, after each of them presents an excuse for not going. In general, they are satisfied with their lives or with the particular things that their life gives them. To each Hoopoe gives an answer, generally including a story or parable. A second round of objections and answers follows; this time the twenty-two objectors are not named. Discussion with the last of them leads to describing the seven valleys on the journey to Simurgh. In the two rounds of answers to the complaints, excuses, and objections are many stories, perhaps the most valuable parts of the work. Among the best are these. On 34-44 there is a great story of a wise muslim man with a great following who falls madly in love with a Christian girl. He abjures the truth faith of Islam for her-and then through the prayer and interaction of one man is won back to the true faith. The description of passionate obsession is classic. Another story (60) presents a pupil with a secret hoard of gold on a trip with his Shaikh. They come to a fork and the pupil says he is afraid to choose. The Shaikh points out that it is the gold that makes him afraid. "Get rid of that which makes you afraid, and then either road will be good." Then again (86-7) there is the story of a proud leader; in the midst of his proud thoughts, the ass on which he is riding breaks wind. He wisely takes the gesture as the ass's answer to his pretensions. On 120-22 there is another great passionate love story. A princess falls in love with a slave. He is drugged, wakes up in a "dream," and enjoys a magical night with her. A final favorite story features a man who cries out in front of his door that he has lost his key. A wise sufi tells him to be of good cheer, since he at least has a door and knows it as his own. Soon enough someone will come out and open it for him. The sufi is looking for both door and key! "Would to God that I could find a door, open or shut!" (122-3). There are stories here of consuming passion, like the moth with the flame. A dervish falls in love with a prince, makes a fool of himself, is tortured and at the point of being executed; when the prince is kind to him and invites him to his garden, the dervish swoons and dies. "When he knew that he was united to his beloved, no other desires were left" (127). Some of the wisdom here can be summed up pithily. "Look death in the eye. Never say 'I.' Being with the Simurgh as a slave is worth more than being given his kingdom. He who is not engaged in the quest for inner life is no more than an animal. Sacrifice everything for love." The stories, like the whole work, are usually talk-heavy and wisdom-heavy. They remind me of stories in Rodriguez' The Practice of Perfection and Christian Virtues. In any case, many of the stories need more of a key to unlock their meaning. On the face, they are rather simplistic and moralistic. In the end, to my surprise the thirty birds who make it to the Simurgh out of the thousands who departed on the trek discover, after some humiliations and disappointments-that they are the Simurgh (132)! There is a glossary on 141-7.

1971 The Flight of the Animals. Story and Pictures by Claudine (Hurwitz). NY: Parents' Magazine Press. $1.50 from Powell's, Portland, March, '96.

This large-format hard-covered book has several approaches to the story that are different: Monkeys dropped a coconut. As a result, the timid rabbit thought that his worst fear was coming true: that the earth was caving in. King Tiger stopped the mad flight that followed. The simple illustrations ornament each of the animals; among them the blue rhino is a favorite of mine.

1971 The Fox Book. Compiled and edited by Richard Shaw. Illustrated by various artists. Dust jacket. NY: Frederick Warne and Co. $1 at Librairie Bookshop, New Orleans, June, '89. Extra copy for $.25 from Bookseller Library Used Book Store & Coffee Shop, Milwaukee, July, '98.

This is a forty-eight page children's book in a series (whose name seems not to appear on the book) on various animals. See the companion The Owl Book (1970). Amid some lovely illustrations, we get all sorts of stories and lore of foxes, including some fables. From Lessing we have "The Raven and the Fox" (12), which turns out to be a development of the standard FC tale. The fox here addresses the raven as the royal eagle. The meat the latter has just found is poisoned, but neither knows it. The raven drops the meat, as is customary, but the fox is dead within half an hour. "The little lies of the flatterer may poison the flatterer too." UP (26) is done by Kay McKemy after La Fontaine. FC in traditional form (34) is attributed to Aesop. "The Two Foxes" (36) is a variation of the fable on the hole in the granary. In this case one of two foxes, having eaten too much, is stuck in the hole through which he has gotten into the farmer's barn and is killed by beating.

1971 The Greedy Dog and other stories from Aesop. Retold by Mae Broadley. Illustrated by Sue Aspey. Hardbound. Printed in Hungary. Manchester, England: Emerald Series: World Distributors. $2.75 from Shelley Baer, Salmo, BC, through Ebay, Jan., '01.

This large-format book presents seven fables with large, even splashy illustrations. I have never seen a cat the color of the cat pictured for BC! FG has a positive moral: "There is comfort in pretending that what we can't get isn't worth having." SW has a bet to see "whoever can make that man take off his coat." My favorite among the illustrations is the two-page spread for the last fable, "The Boastful Gnat." It is a forceful, frontal view of the gnat on the lion's nose. The book's spine is beginning to split.

1971 The King's Choice. A Folktale from India. Retold by K. Shivkumar. Illustrated by Yoko Mitsuhashi. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. $2.50 at Hooked on Books, Colorado Springs, March, '94.

This pleasing little sideways book presents Kalila and Dimna's story, told by Schanzabeh, of the camel attacked by the counselors of King Lion, but gives it an ending new to me. Just as the courtiers (here fox, vulture, and leopard) are ready to pounce on the unsuspecting camel who has offered himself, King Lion declares that he will eat all of them in the order in which they have offered themselves! The three others flee, and camel and lion are friends for life. This version also has the foursome going off to get the camel in the desert; the camel brings all but the vulture back home on his back.

1971 The Lion's Tail.  Illustrated by Joe Szeghy.  Second printing.  Paperbound.  Glenview, IL: Scott Foresman Reading Systems Level 2, Book C: Scott, Foresman and Company.  $1 from Karen Mueller, Cedar Springs, MI, through Ebay, August, '19.

This is a 16-page pamphlet, 7" x 9".  The story is new to me, but works well enough as a fable.  The lion is sad because he cannot find his tail.  A mouse and a monkey look for it in vain.  Then a turtle bets that he can find it.  He asks the lion to get up.  The lion has been sitting on his tail.  The last page asks young readers to choose who couldn't and who could find the lion's tail.

1971 The Miller, the Boy and the Donkey.  Brian Wildsmith.  Second impression.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  NY:  Franklin Watts.  $15 from Feldman's Books, Menlo Park, CA, July, '15.

Here is a second impression of a book first published by Franklin Watts in 1969.  This copy not only adds a dust-jacket.  It changes slightly the publication information on the title-page and adds an SBN number.  It is also in much better condition than my 1969 copy.  As I reread this version now twenty-eight years later, I am struck by the changes Wildsmith makes in La Fontaine's version.  Father and son carried the donkey as the first step in the journey ""to save him from dirtying his feet on the way."  They carried the donkey in a kind of make-shift pallet.  They changed then from that approach because "The miller did not like to be laughed at."  In the end, they sold the donkey quickly.  The miller's "head ached from thinking about his difficult journey and all the different kinds of advice he had received."  From now on, he would make up his own mind and then stick to it.  The story's last line is "They went in search of their dinner."

1971 The Ontario Readers: First Book. Authorized by the Minister of Education. Exact Facsimile. Toronto: T. Eaton Co., Ltd. See 1923/71.

1971 The Potter and His Children: A Stone Age Fable. Robert Caples. Illustrations by the author. Dust jacket. NY: A Geneva Book: Carlton Press. $12 from Greg Williams, June, '94.

I tried unsuccessfully several times over to make headway in this novel-length story. At work here are apparently affection for animals and admiration for the creative wonder that a person is. For me, it is just too simplistic.

1971 The Rich Man and the Singer: Folktales from Ethiopia. Told by Mesfin Habte-Mariam; Edited and Illustrated by Christine Price. First edition. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: E.P. Dutton & Co. $14.50 from Bell's Books, Palo Alto, July, '03. 

This lovely short book of eighty pages has brought me three surprises. First, it is a book of fables. The stories are short and pointed. Secondly, these fables are mostly traditional ones that I have found in some form in fable books. The introduction does well to point out that stories have come to Ethiopia from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Thirdly, there is sometimes a bit of a twist that makes the traditional fables different--and maybe less strong. Thus in "The Rich Man and the Singer" (5), which is La Fontaine's story of the financier and the cobbler, the story's basic premise is that the singer will give his gift of song to the rich man in return for all his riches. Imagine this scenario. When the two change their happiness, why would the once-rich man, now happy, return to his riches and give up the blessing of song? Again, "The Three Thieves" (28) is told with no reference to dreaming before the three go to sleep. When all three happen to dream, I think the author strains credibility. There are several stories that are new to me and charming, along with their simple and highly stylized black-and-white illustrations. Mammo the fool (10) always follows the instructions he received after his last mistake--and therefore gets it all wrong--until the day that his carrying a donkey makes a girl laugh and speak. This is a recovery, for she, a princess, has been sick and speechless for years. Mammo the fool becomes her husband and a prince! The women who want to govern the land are sent to the king with a bird in a box. Out of curiosity they open the box and lose the bird, and so are found to be not responsible enough to govern (21). A lost king is helped by a farmer who does not recognize him. The king takes him to court to "see the king" with one bit of advice: the king is the one who does not do what others do. After several rounds of people's bowing and saluting, the farmer has to ask "Which of the two of us is king?" A clever wizard, unjustly accused and about to be executed, is asked by the king when the king will die. "On the next morning after my death" (34). Smart wizard! The difficult quarrel between the hyena and monkey (35) cannot be settled, because of vested interests, by judge or elders. But a poor man finds a great solution. He gets each apart and says "Do not lessen your dignity by paying attention to this scoundrel!"

1971 The Wedding of the Foxes: Japanese Fables and Fantasy (Miniature).  Odake.  Hardbound.  Franklin, NH: The Hillside Press.  $15.50 from Deane MacLellan, Berwick, ME, through Ebay, May, '20.

Here is an unnumbered 1971 copy of a numbered 1968 edition.  It was printed not in the USA but in Hong Kong.  A simple sentence states "This edition is limited in quantity and was published in 1971."  All else seems identical.  I will include comments from that edition.  Perhaps both the translations and illustrations were taken from an 1871 first publication of these stories.  The title-story is surprising in that it does not take a turn for the worse.  A beautiful young male fox marries a beautiful young female fox, and they thrive and have children.  The sole surprise is, perhaps after the fashion of a pourquoi story, the bride makes her way on the wedding day through a rain shower in the midst of sunshine.  In Japan, a shower during sunshine is called "the fox's bride going to her husband's house."  "The Adventures of Little Peachling" tells of a miraculous baby born out of peach who goes off to take the treasure from the ogres.  He gathers helpful allies along the way: ape, pheasant, and dog.  "The Tongue-Cut Sparrow" tells of disparate handling of a pet bird and disparate rewards for the spouses who alternately cared for and wounded the pet.  "The Crackling Mountain" tells of a feud between a hare and a badger, with plenty of magic involved.  In it an old man is tricked into eating his wife who has been boiled into being a broth!

1971 Three Aesop Fox Fables. Paul Galdone. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Seventh printing. Printed in USA. NY: Clarion Books: Houghton Mifflin. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan, Nov., '98.

I immediately presumed that this book was a copy of one I already had. It turns out that I have several copies of the "Weekly Reader" printing and a paperback of this version but never had this hardbound source for the former. This is not the first time that I was delightfully mistaken! See those versions, both under 1971, for comments.

1971 Three Aesop Fox Fables. Paul Galdone. No translator mentioned. Hardbound. Weekly Reader Children's Book Club. NY: Seabury Press. Gift of Marian Adamski, Aug., '86. Extra copies for $1 at Goodwill Book Fair, DC, Nov., '91 and for $1.48 at Half Price Books, Des Moines, April, '93.

Lively and expressive watercolors for these three well-known fables: FG, FS, and FC. I like best the facial expressions in the stork story.

1971 Three Aesop Fox Fables. Paul Galdone. No translator mentioned. Paperbound. NY: Clarion Books: Houghton Mifflin. $5.95 at Children's Books, Chicago, Sept., '92.

It is strange that I have gone all these years and never even known that there was a paperback of this lively little book. Galdone's work remains enjoyable.

1971 Twice Upon a Time. By Donald D. McCall. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in USA. Chicago: Moody Press. $18 from Ye Old Bookworm, Odessa, TX, through Interloc, Sept., '97. Extra copy with dust jacket in very good condition for $10 from P.C. Schmidt, East Lansing, MI, June, '98

In his introduction, McCall spells out the "purpose and intent" of this book, "that the familiar fables of Aesop might be used as introductions to passages in the Word of God; that we might project the ideas of the fables into the ideals of biblical thought" (8). In twenty-five chapters, that is what he does. He tells each fable and then works with its imagery for four or five pages. Thus after telling TH, he dwells on Paul's question to the Galatians: "You were running well; who hindered you?" "The Fox and the Goat" turns into a meditation on the leap of faith. DLS leads to the question of whether our accent betrays us as unchristian. "The Monkey Mother and Her Two Children" leads McCall to urge avoiding extremes of either freedom of expression or discipline as we bring up children. The election of the briar bush shows that people get the leaders that they deserve, and McCall urges readers to shoulder their responsibilities, especially to their church. I have not yet found a McCall exegesis that captures me.

1971 Up One Pair of Stairs of My Book House. Edited by Olive Beaupré Miller. Various illustrators. Lake Bluff, IL: The Book House for Children. See 1920/71.

1971 Wem ich zu gefallen suche: Deutsche Fabeln und Lieder der Aufklärung. Herausgegeben von Ingrid Sommer. Mit Stichen von Daniel Chodowiecki. Hardbound. Dust jacket. 1. Auflage. Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen. DM 15 from an unknown source, June, '98.

This is basically the same book as the paperback Deutsche Fabeln und Lieder der Aufklärung, published by Insel in 1976. It is hardbound and has a dust-jacket. It adds a first portion to the book's title, taken from the title of the first work presented. This edition also adds red ink for titles on the title-page and throughout. The Insel edition refers to this publisher for its copyright in publishing that work. Though the T of C plates are fresh, the page numbers for each of the fables seems to come out the same as in that edition. The titles in this edition are in black and have moved slightly on the page. As I wrote there, there are six authors in this book: Lessing, Hagedorn, Gellert, Lichtwer, Gleim, and Pfeffel. I am surprised that Gellert has even more fables here than Lessing. Chodowiecki's engravings are not as heavily inked, and so may present more detail. There is a Bildverzeichniss on 307-10. A Quellenverzeichniss and a T of C follow. Songs and fables are not distinguished in the organisation of this book.

1971 When the Porcupine Moved In. Cora Annett. Illustrated by Peter Parnall. NY: Franklin Watts. $.50 from the Milwaukee Public Library, Nov., '95.

This delightful story is at least related to an Aesopic fable. The porcupine moves in more and more, and the poor rabbit can never stand up to him until he has a great idea.... Great illustrations include the cover profiles, the rabbit glumly hearing the opening pitch from the pushy, contrary porcupine, the two-page spread of the rabbit house infested by porcupines, and the side view of the rabbit smiling over a bright idea late in the story. All the illustrations are in black-and-white. The book has a few stains, but the price was right!

1971 When the Porcupine Moved In.  By Cora Annett.  Illustrated by Peter Parnall.  Paperbound.  Printed in USA.  NY: Franklin Watts.  $10 from Old Tampa Book Company, July, '03. 

I was unsure when I bought this book in Tampa whether I had already acquired a copy.  It turns out that I had, but that it was hardbound.  This book is not even "softbound."  It has in fact no binding at all.  Sheets are just folded--very neatly--at their center.  The covers are extended to become the flyleaves.  Let me add what I wrote about the hardbound edition then:  This delightful story is at least related to an Aesopic fable.  The porcupine moves in more and more, and the poor rabbit can never stand up to him until he has a great idea....  Great illustrations include the cover profiles, the rabbit glumly hearing the opening pitch from the pushy, contrary porcupine, the two-page spread of the rabbit house infested by porcupines, and the side view of the rabbit smiling over a bright idea late in the story.  All the illustrations are in black-and-white.

1971 Young Years: Best Loved Stories and Poems for Little Children. Editor: Augusta Baker. Originally illustrated by various people, along with classical illustrations by famous artists. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. See 1960/71.

1971 12 Folk and Fairy Tales.  Selected by Penelope Coquet.  Illustrated by Paul Durand.  Hardbound.  Second printing.  NY: Golden Press: Western Publishing Company. See 1970/71.

1971/72 fables choisies de La Fontaine I. Livres I à VI. Nouveaux Classiques Larousse. Notes by Claude Dreyfus. Paper. Paris: Librairie Larousse. $2.50 from Powell's, Portland, July, '93. Extra copy for $1.50 from Adams, San Diego, Aug., '93.

A typical French graduate student text, complete with possible exam questions. A few black-and-white illustrations from Doré, Grandville, Effel, and others. These two volumes represent different printings: see the different bibliographical data on the bottom of 178. AI of Volumes I-II on 174-5.

1971/73 Der Spatz in der Hand: Fabeln und Verse. Wolf Dietrich Schnurre. Mit 75 Zeichnungen des Autors. Zweite Auflage. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Munich/Vienna: Langen-Müller Verlag. Gift, Heidelberg, July, '07.

I have tried to give a more objective account of this fine little book in the listing for the first edition in 1971. This book formed the stuff of my delightful long discussions with Sabine Obermaier in Mainz in summer of 2007. We found Schnurre fun, stimulating, insightful. I marked up this copy of the second edition abundantly with questions and observations. We learned early to take Schnurre's titles seriously: they often are crucial to the joke or point of a piece. There is a mixture here of verse and prose. We concentrated on the fables, that is, the prose. I marked the best with an asterisk. Let me mention a few samples here. A silver fox greets a furrier (12). "Are you nuts?" calls the hedgehog. The silver fox whisks a bit of dust from his fur and answers "But he has brought me to respect and dignities." Schnurre's apt title is "Der Gemanagte" (12). Government and the media have managed this fox well! A wren discovers with horror that he has raised a cuckoo. "There are two possibilities," he thinks with a shiver. "Either Ella has given birth to the Messias or she has been unfaithful to me" (14). Guess which of the two possibilities is more likely! "Die geregelte Ausnahme" (24) has a gazelle run from but then caught by a troop of hyenas. She is now in their jaws and horrified. "But I thought nature had declared that you devour only the dead." The hyenas shrug their shoulders and ask "Who says that we are going to violate this rule?" In other words, they will wait until she dies in their jaws before they eat her! Clever! One fable giving its title to the whole section is "Die schwierige Position Gottes" (208). Its point is similar to that made by an Aesopic fable about a father with two daughters. Here the farmers pray on Sunday morning to be spared fire, bad crops, and swarms of locusts. At the same time, the locusts hold a prayer service that includes this: "Smite the foe with blindness, so that we can eat his fields in peace."

1971/73 The Father, his Son and their Donkey/Hermes and the Wood-cutter/The Rich Man and his Servant. Oxford Graded Readers. Retold by L.A. Hill. Illustrated by Paul Wright. London: Oxford University Press. $.25 in Ife, Nigeria, Dec., '88.

Nice changes inculturate these fables: Ibrahim and Ali are given native skin and clothing. Hermes becomes the god of a river. The servant and the rich man con each other.

1971/77 The Grasshopper and the Ants. For use with tape of same name. Walt Disney Productions. $5.95 at Stephenson's in Omaha, May, '91.

Slight reworking, to accompany an audiocassette, of the Western booklet (1968) of the same name. So Hop here is again joined by Gabriel the cricket, Bubba the vulture, and Andy the savior ant. The plates are the same. The texts are moved around into first person quotations. The back cover and inside covers talk about the Listening Center and emphasize good listening behavior.

1971/78 Paul dan Sally dengan Dongeng Aesop. Faith Graham and A.R. Whitear. Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons Ltd. 1971. Singapore: (c)1978 Addison-Wesley Publishing Company. $.40 at Central Market in Kuala Lumpur, June, '90.

My one find in Malaysia! Apparently a good old English kids' book with Malay text put in (and one sign changed to Malay in the last illustration). Paul and Sally hear Aesop's life and some of his stories: FG, FS, and DM. It looks like there is an attempt to apply the stories to life.

1971/79 Fables from Kenya. L. Farrant. Paperbound. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Controlled Readers for Africa, Stage 4: Macmillan Press. $2.80 from Second Story Books, Rockville, MD, Jan., '06. 

Here is a slightly larger than 5" x 7" pamphlet containing fourteen folktales from Kenya on some 52 pages, followed by four pages of comprehension questions, and one page of topic words. Each story gets one full-page black-and-white illustration. The short pre-statement on the series of "Controlled Readers" is remarkably unclear on the target audience, which I take to be non-English speakers. Farrant does a good job of keeping each story short and pointed; as a result, I would call these stories fables, even though most of them are aetiological folktales. An industrious rabbit tricks an old woman into thinking that he is farming her field; an old Masai takes the thorn out of a lion's paw, and the lion in gratitude does not attack the village. A poor family receives three wishes so that they may rise up from poverty, but the mother, having used her wish to become young and beautiful, is taken to be the chief's new bride. The son in anger wishes that his mother be transformed into a dog. The father, upon returning, has to use his wish to restore his wife. The experience does cure her however of her constant complaining. Hyenas now limp because once six of them stood on each other's shoulders to reach some meat supposedly growing on trees--and then fell all over each other when the top hyena would not share. Two of the stories late in this collection take up familiar fables. In "The Jackal and the Camel" (41), the jackal, having eaten his fill of sugar cane, sings and dances for joy, attracting the farmers to the still-eating camel. They wound him. The jackal's later explanation to the camel is that, when he has eaten sugar cane, he feels like dancing and shouting with joy. The camel takes him halfway across the river and sits down. When the surprised jackal asks why, he receives an answer in kind. The cricket convinces the ass that he sings so well because he does not drink or eat anything but dew (44). The stupid ass tries to do the same. The last story, "The Steam Engine" (51), describes the argument between fire and water; each claims to make the engine go.

1971/80 fables de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Benvenuti. Préface de Raymond Dumay. Graphics are nearly identical with Italian Le favole di La Fontaine (1971). Printed in Italy. Paris: Deux Coqs d'Or. $8 at Constant Reader, June, '94.

Numerous realistic, playful, better-than-average drawings of animals in courtly human garb. It would be difficult to separate some from the text, since they are so well arranged on the page. The book is organized around specific animals. The 1982 edition changes the coloring and sizing of the print on the covers, the pre-title page, and the title-page; it also advertises the series of books, "Contes-Histoires: Série Classiques," to which this volume belongs.

1971/81 Aesop in the Courts. Volume II. By Aron Steuer. NY: Law-Arts Publishers, Inc. $12.50 by mail from the publishers, Nov., '92.

See Volume I under 1971. The stories here seem slightly longer. The three I read are fun.

1971/82 Le favole di La Fontaine. Versione di Emilio De Marchi. Illustrazioni di Benvenuti. Apparently published simultaneously in Paris by Editions des Deux Coqs d'Or. Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori. 10,000 Lire at Mondadori, Rome, Fall, '83.

Realistic and playful drawings of animals in courtly human garb. I do not see any I would take now, but they are better-than-average. It may be difficult to get some away from the text, since they are so well arranged on the page. Many illustrations.

1971/87 Satire from Aesop to Buchwald. Edited by Frederick Kiley and J.M. Shuttleworth. Twelfth Printing. Paperbound. NY: Macmillan and London: Collier Macmillan. $0.01 from Stephen Trembley, Portland, OR, through eBay, Oct., '06.

The two first items in this book of satire come from Aesop and Babrius, respectively: FG and "The Oxen and the Butchers" (7). Ambrice Bierce contributes six funny items from Fantastic Fables on 307-310. The book bears testimony to the way fable fits into all sorts of collections and categories.

1971/87 Stories from Aesop. Retold by Gwendoline Dun. Illustrated by Frank C. Pape. Oxford English Picture Readers: Grade One. Colour edition. Printed in Hong Kong. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan from Charing Cross Road, Sept., '93.

Compare this edition with the Uni-Phone Language Institute edition from Korea of 1982. This edition takes the same nine fables and their illustrations but adds color to the latter. See my notes there. Aesop never stands still!

1971/88 fables de La Fontaine.  Illustrated by Benvenuti.  Preface by Raymond Dumay.  Hardbound.  Paris: Contes-Histoires: Série Classiques:  Deux Coqs d'Or.  $24.95 from Schoenhof's, Boston, Dec., '90. 

The 1988 printing changes the coloring and sizing of the print on the covers, the pre-title page, and the title-page; it also advertises the series of books,  "Contes-Histoires: Série Classiques," to which this volume belongs.  As I wrote of the 1980 printing, there are here numerous realistic, playful, better-than-average drawings of animals in courtly human garb.  It would be difficult to separate some from the text, since they are so well arranged on the page.  The book is organized around specific animals.

1971/89 La Fontaine Fables I: Livres 1 à 6. Claude Dreyfus. Paperbound. Paris: Classiques Larousse: Librairie Larousse. $4 from Clare Leeper, July, '96.

Larousse has put a new cover-picture on their standard edition of the first six books of La Fontaine's fables. It is Grandville's GA colored against a plain blue and white background. As I have written before, this is a typical French graduate student text, complete with possible exam questions. A few black-and-white illustrations from Doré, Grandville, Effel, and others.

1971/92 Las Fábulas de Esopo. Traducidas directamente del Griego y de las versiones Latinas de Fedro, Aviano, Aulo Gellio, etc. Precedidas de un ensayo histórico-critico sobre la fábula, y de noticias biográficas de los autores citados por Eduardo de Mier. Paperback. (On cover: Esopo: fábulas. On spine: fábulas completas: Esopo.) Edesa. Mexico City: Editorial Epoca, S.A. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Dec., '94.

This is one of the wierder books I have. The wierdness starts with a cover picture stolen backwards from the frontispiece of Fritz Kredel's Aesop's Fables. Next we meet Velasquez' portrait of Aesop. Then we find 318 Aesopic fables with good (and even complete?) reproductions of Ernst Griset's illustrations. Pages 91-4 are strangely typewritten and their ten fables strangely numbered. The book's last page gives a list of six cases where the title of the fable and the title of the full-page illustration do not match; for example, there is a "bear and lion" story on 39 and a "tiger and lion" illustration facing 40. On page 189 we begin three books of Lessing's fables, translated by Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusc (sic). In all there are ninety fables from Lessing. The illustrations for Lessing's fables are not from Griset. Last in the book come a list of full-page illustrations and a T of C.

1971? Les Fables de La Fontaine 10 LP Box Set Decca Rare with Book.  Jean Baptist Oudry.  Boxed.  Paperbound.  Paris, France.  $19.95 from Scott Danielsen, Cambridge, NY, through Ebay, Feb., '20.

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!

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To top

1972

1972 A Crocodile's Tale: A Philippine Folk Story by Jose & Ariane Aruego. Pamphlet. Printed in USA. NY: Scholastic Book Services. $.98 from Half-Price Books, Dallas, Oct., '99.

This story is like "The Brahmin and the Tiger." Juan meets a crocodile tied to a tree. The crocodile promises a ring for his freedom. Juan agrees. Freed, the crocodile invites Juan to jump on his back to get the ring. But in the middle of the river, he announces that he will eat Juan now. In answer to Juan's claims that it is not fair, the crocodile laughs and answers that most boys never have the chance to be eaten by a crocodile! They ask passers-by, like an old basket and then an old hat floating down the river, if it is right. Finally they ask a monkey in a banana tree. The monkey shouts back twice "I can't hear you. Come a little closer." Juan jumps to shore and is saved. The monkey asks him to have his father plant more banana trees. He also requests that, when he sees him in the trees, he not to tell on him. The pages are brittle, especially from some water damage.

1972 A Manual of Aesopic Fable Literature. George C. Keidel. NY: Lenox Hill (Burt Franklin). See 1896/1972.

1972 A Moving Fable Drawn From America's Past. Illustrated by Enid Cytryn. Text by Leonard Schwartz. NY: McGraw-Hill. $.60 at Goodwill Book Fair, DC, Nov., '91.

A strange and attractive coloring book that advertises on its cover: "The Smithsonian is the theatre. The Folk Art is the Cast." Carousel figures and weathervanes, colored in the cover pictures, are offered in black-and-white. Actually the book has nothing to do with fable and offers a good example of the contemporary romantic use of the word. "If it lacks in sophistication, it excels in imagination."

1972 A Selection of Aesop's Fables. Re-written especially for children by Barbara Sanders. Illustrated by Christopher Sanders. London: Castle Books: Murray. See 1952?/72.

1972 Aesop In the Afternoon. Albert Cullum. Unacknowledged illustrations from various traditional artists, chiefly Bewick. First printing? Paperback.  (c)Scholastic Magazines. NY: Citation Press. <small>$10 from Greg Williams, Walk a Crooked Mile Books, Philadelphia, July, '99. Extra copy for $4.95 at Black Star, Chicago, Oct., '89. Extra copy of second printing for $1 at Goodwill Book Fair, DC, Nov., '91.</small>

A surprise find of a book I have sought for several years. Cullum presents the fables as dramas for teachers to use in less heady afternoon sessions of school. The fables, told traditionally, are divided according to the number of actors involved.

1972 Aesop: Subtyll Historyes and Fables of Esope. Westminster 1483. Caxton's edition and illustrations in facsimile (apparently, but nowhere acknowledged). #439 of The English Experience: Its Record in Early Printed Books Published in Facsimile. Printed in the Netherlands. NY: Da Capo Press, Plenum Publishing Corporation. See 1483/1972.

1972 Aesop's Fables. Adapted by James A. Hall. Illustrated by Christopher Bradbury. CBS Records. $6.40 from Bill and Barbara Yoffee, Oct., '91. Extra copy for $3 at the Sebastopol flea market, Aug., '93.

Twenty fables with alternating black-and-white (xerox?) and color illustrations. The latter have charm but sometimes lack definition. The best are of GB (7), the mice in council (19), and TMCM (34). Several stories are told differently: the gnat believes he is too heavy and leaves with no word from the bull (7); the lion claims that he is strongest, bravest, fiercest, and in charge and so takes all four portions (15); he omits the element of challenge usually present in the fourth element. The fox opines that high air is bad for grapes (16). The milkmaid snaps her fingers, stamps her foot, and then tosses her head, using the formulaic "just like that" for each. The cat's approach changes the mice's toast at the city banquet (34). "The Lion and the Hares" (39) is a new fable to me. A sleeper.

1972 Aesop's Fables. As told by Saiko Hieda. Illustrated by Kuniro Fukazawa. Hardbound. Printed in Tokyo. Chicago: Rand McNally & Company. $6 from Pam's Books, Portland, OR, July, '11. Extra copies for $14.55 from Bunny Books, Prophetstown, IL, through eBay and for $5.99 from Ruth Hager, Redmond, OR, through eBay, Oct., '10.

This may be my first "flip out book," in which a two-page spread includes a page that folds out to make a triptych. The pages are well matched to create two different pictures using the image on the left, one with the right-hand page folded in and one with this page folded out. For example, the lion opens his eye to see the mouse and then catches him; again, the lion is in the net and then out of it. The page-matches are well executed. LM and TH each get two sets of fold-outs. This is the first lion I know of who cries "Help!" OF, FS, DS, and SW have one pair of fold-outs each. The moral is introduced in each case with "Aesop says." Simple art. The cover-illustration--the donkey carrying a bag of salt--is not involved in the book's six stories! I had had two defective copies of this book before I finally found a copy intact.

1972 Aesop's Fables Coloring Book. Ulm illustrations of 1476, along with "new retellings...based closely on old Greek texts." NY: Dover. See 1476/1972.

1972 Affengeplapper: 100 der schönsten Fabeln aus aller Welt. Hans Baumann. Mit vielen Bildern von Walter Grieder. Ravensburger Taschenbücher Band 255. Erstausgabe. Paperbound. Ravensburg: Otto Maier Verlag. €4 from Funzels-Shop, Hamburg, through eBay, July, '09.

This is an expanded edition of a book that appeared first from the Georg Bitter Verlag, Recklinghausen, under the title Ein Fuchs fährt nach America. This simple paperback collection identifies its one hundred fables by nation or author in its opening T of C but not along the way. There are many good fables here. The back cover points readers to one: "Bereits vor 5000 Jahren schrieb ein Schuler in Sumer eine Fabel auf eine Tontafel." It is the story of the wolf who captures a goat. "Let me go," the goat says, "and I will get you a lamb tomorrow." Okay, but what is your name? "The wolf is powerful." The next day the wolf comes and asks for his lamb but gets no answer. Is not your name 'The wolf is powerful'? "No, that was my name yesterday. Today my name is 'The wolf is stupid'!" (38). An illiterate woman came to the letter-writer and asked him to write a letter right away. "I cannot. My foot hurts." Do you write with your foot? "No, I write so poorly that I have to deliver my letters myself!" (23). A snail crept along onto a mirror and was pleased to see how pretty she was. Soon she crept with her slime around enough of the mirror that she could no longer see herself in it (29). I am surprised at how many of these traditional fables I know! About every fifth or sixth fable gets a black-and-white illustration. 

1972 Basni Kharkivski. Grigory Savvich Skovoroda. V. D. Cernyxa. Hardbound. Kharkiv: Prapor. $15 from an unknown source, July, '02.

This little (4½" x 5¾") black book combines the fables and aphorisms of Gregory Savvich Skovoroda. Thirty fables are on 22-96. Apparently they are named after the area of Kharkiv, where the publishing house itself can be found. Skovoroda (1722-1794) was a Ukrainian philosopher, poet, teacher and composer who lived in the Russian Empire and who made important contributions to Russian philosophy and culture. He lived and worked in Ukraine and passionately and consciously identified with its people, differentiating them from those of Russia and condemning Russia's interference in his homeland. He has been referred to as the "Russian Socrates." He led a life of an itinerant thinker-beggar. The visual art here includes two designs at the beginning of a fable, an initial, and a tailpiece. There are also several full-page illustrations. The pre-title page offers "1722 - 1972" and so signals the 250th anniversary of Skovoroda's birth. The lovely frontispiece shows him writing. The portrayal of him matches with the pictures one finds in online encyclopedias. Some library owned this book but whited out their information. O.R. Mazurkevyich seems to have had something to do with the production of this book. 

1972 Children and Books. Fourth Edition. May Hill Arbuthnot and Zena Sutherland. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman. See 1947/72.

1972 Crickets and Frogs: A Fable by Gabriela Mistral/Grillos y Ranas: Una Fábula de Gabriela Mistral. Bilingual. Translated and Adapted by Doris Dana. Illustrated by Antonio Frasconi. First edition. Dust jacket. A Margaret K. McElderry Book. NY: Atheneum. Gift of Linda Schlafer, Dec., '92.

This very pleasant little story touches on at least two mysteries: (1) the one and the many and (2) social conflict. The art work by Frasconi is, I think, better than his other fable work that I know.

1972 Der Edelstein. Ulrich Boner. Boxed set; #429 of 950. Hardbound. Original: Bamberg: Albrecht Pfister; Reproduction: Stuttgart: Verlag Müller und Schindler/Buchdruckerei Holzer. See 1461/1972.

1972 dogs cats + other friends. Edited by Louise Bachelder. Illustrated by Marian Morton. Dust jacket. Mount Vernon, NY: The Peter Pauper Press. $1 on street outside Second Story, Sept., '91.

A random collection of comments and poetry on animals. The fables of the beaver biting off his own tail and of the crane putting down the peacock ("but I can fly") are labelled as Aesop's on 12-13. Also Emerson's delightful "Mountain and Squirrel" (7) and a one-liner from Beaumont and Fletcher: "The mouse once saved the lion in his need" (61). Aesop shows up in so many places!

1972 Esopo: Fábulas. Selección, adaptación y comentarios de Angela Simonini de Fuentes. Ilustraciones de Aniano Lisa. Séptima edición. Biblioteca Billiken. Colección Roja. Buenos Aires: Editorial Atlantida. $3.50 at Dalton in Mayaguez, April, '90.

Simplicity and straightforwardness mark the versions and the two-color art in this kids' book.

1972 Esopovi Baïky (Ukrainian "Aesop's Fables"). Volodymyra Zabashtans and Anatolia Cherdakli. Illustrations by Pipina Tsimikale. Hardbound. Kiev: Veselka. $7 from Victor Romanchenko, Sumy, Ukraine, through eBay, Sept., '06.

This seems to be an earlier collaboration among a team whose work was published by the same company in 1990. Again, the art is typified by a classical bent and by geometric patterns, often echoing those of classical Greek art. A first sign of this tendency comes on the right-hand title-page, when a crow is caught in the wool of a sheep that is almost rectangular, and whose fleece is depicted by circular maze swirls. This work seems to have been based on a Greek book published by Papademetriou in Athens in 1956. As the closing T of C indicates, there are some sixty fables here on 123 pages. An unusual feature of the book is that its illustrations are four pairs of two-page spreads, one page of which is colored. The colored first page of the second is the verso of the colored second page of the first. Examples are the fallen charioteer and "Hercules and the Carter" between 31 and 34. Are these perhaps two phases of the same story? Again, between 47 and 50, we may have two phases of the story of the war horse turned farm horse, who is asked to go back to war again and begs not to. Between 79 and 82, who is that fox who drives the chariot and is then sent packing? Does the set between 111 and 114 depict the story of the lion and ass hunting together? The colored image here of three men running from the lion may be the best piece of artwork in this curious book. The front cover has a clever mirroring of fighting goats by fighting men in the same position. 

1972 Fabeln, Parabeln und Gleichnisse. Beispiele didaktischer Literatur. Herausgegeben, eingeleitet und kommentiert von Reinhard Dithmar. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. See 1970/72.

1972 Fabeln, Sagen, bunte Geschichten aus der alten Welt. Otto Wecker. Mit Erläuterungsheft bearbeitet von Otto Wecker. Sechste Auflage. Paperbound. Göttingen: Atrium Linguae Latinae: Lateinische Texte für Gymnasien, Heft 1 (Text): Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. DM 6 from Antiquariat Ryks & Verma, Hamburg, July, '98. 

Key pages here for the person interested in fables are 7-27. They contain two sections. The first has forty prose fables; the second has twenty-five verse fables of Phaedrus. There is a separate "Erläuterungsheft," that is, a pamphlet of vocabulary for the texts in the pamphlet itself. It would be fun to try the prose fables in a normal beginning Latin class! This is one of the little treasures for the preservation of which a fable collection exists.

1972 Fables. Illustrations de S[teve] Medvey. Pamphlet. Printed in France. Les Petits Livres d'Argent #350. Paris: Editions des Deux Coqs d'Or. $2 from Pierre Cantin, Chelsea, Quebec, through Ebay, April, '00.

The story is familiar to me by now. I thought I had this soft-covered children's book already, since I recognized its artist and his work. Wrong again! This little book in the "silver" series is a soft-covered reproduction of two of the four stories that appear in the book from the "gold" series of the same year. The two stories included here are TH and "Le Loup et les Chevreaux." Dropped from that "Livre d'Or" edition are "Le Chien et le Coq" and TMCM. One illustration of "Le Loup et les Chevreaux" is dropped here. Surprisingly, the last illustration of "Le Chien et le Coq" still appears here as the back end-paper, even though the story is no longer here. There is some writing on the title-page, which is also torn. See my comments on both the "Livre d'Or" copy and the English-language Nursery Tales in 1952, which these small French books (6.5" x 8") reproduce.

1972 Fables and Fabulists: Ancient and Modern. Thomas Newbigging. Essay Index Reprint Series. Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press. See 1895/1972.

1972 Fables and Folktales from Many Lands. Edited by Walter B. Barbe. Highlights Handbook. Columbus, Ohio: Highlights for Children, Inc. $2.95 at Maple Street Book Shop, New Orleans, June, '89.

This simple large pamphlet has five Aesopic fables and a good collection of fables and folktales from around the world. "Evil Returns to the Evildoer" from Africa is a delightful alternative version of Aesop's "The Fox and the Crane."

1972 Fables de La Fontaine: Édition Illustrée, Tome I.  J.J. Grandville.  Hardbound.  Paris: Chez Michel de l'Ormeraie.  €8.75 from a favorite Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  

At the end of a wonderfully successful shopping day along the Seine, a favorite Buchinist mentioned this set of four volumes to me.  At first I was uninterested; I have a great deal of Grandville.  Then he mentioned that the printing of Grandville's illustrations was particularly sharp, and that that quality was what endeared the set to him.  I checked and he was right.  The illustrations come off the page wonderfully here!  Good examples include "The Man Between Two Maitresses" (69), CJ (81), and CW (161).  Part of the accomplishment of this book is that pages of illustration are not printed on the verso.  Though illustration-pages are included in the pagination, they have no page numbers printed on them.  There is a place-marking band.  This first volume covers the first three books of La Fontaine's fables.  At the end of this volume is a T of C of its three books and also an AI for the whole twelve-book, four-volume set.  Very nice!

1972 Fables de La Fontaine: Édition Illustrée, Tome II.  Jean de La Fontaine.  J.J. Grandville.  Hardbound.  Paris: Chez Michel de l'Ormeraie.  €8.75 from a favorite Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  

At the end of a wonderfully successful shopping day along the Seine, a favorite Buchinist mentioned this set of four volumes to me.  At first I was uninterested; I have a great deal of Grandville.  Then he mentioned that the printing of Grandville's illustrations was particularly sharp, and that that quality was what endeared the set to him.  I checked and he was right.  The illustrations come off the page wonderfully here!  Good examples include "The Lion in Love" (16), "The Wolf, the Goat, and the Kid" (73), and "The Horse and the Wolf" (134).  Part of the accomplishment of this book is that pages of illustration are not printed on the verso.  Though illustration-pages are included in the pagination, they have no page numbers printed on them.  There is a place-marking band.  This second volume covers Books IV through VI of La Fontaine's fables.  At the end of this volume is a T of C of its three books and also an AI for the whole twelve-book, four-volume set.  Very nice!

1972 Fables de La Fontaine: Édition Illustrée, Tome III.  J.J. Grandville.  Hardbound.  Paris: Chez Michel de l'Ormeraie.  €8.75 from a favorite Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  

At the end of a wonderfully successful shopping day along the Seine, a favorite Buchinist mentioned this set of four volumes to me.  At first I was uninterested; I have a great deal of Grandville.  Then he mentioned that the printing of Grandville's illustrations was particularly sharp, and that that quality was what endeared the set to him.  I checked and he was right.  The illustrations come off the page wonderfully here!  Good examples include "Le Pouvoir des Fables" (111), "Le Rat et l'Huitre" (131), and "Democrite et les Abderitains" (207).  Part of the accomplishment of this book is that pages of illustration are not printed on the verso.  Though illustration-pages are included in the pagination, they have no page numbers printed on them.  There is a place-marking band.  This third volume covers Books VI through IX of La Fontaine's fables.  At the end of this volume is a T of C of its three books and also an AI for the whole twelve-book, four-volume set.  Very nice!

1972 Fables de La Fontaine: Édition Illustrée, Tome IV.  J.J. Grandville.  #6861.  Hardbound.  Paris: Chez Michel de l'Ormeraie.  €8.75 from a favorite Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  

At the end of a wonderfully successful shopping day along the Seine, a favorite Buchinist mentioned this set of four volumes to me.  At first I was uninterested; I have a great deal of Grandville.  Then he mentioned that the printing of Grandville's illustrations was particularly sharp, and that that quality was what endeared the set to him.  I checked and he was right.  The illustrations come off the page wonderfully here!  Good examples include "Le Chien a qui l'on a coupé les Oreilles" (56), "Le Vieillard et les trois jeunes Hommes" (130), and ""L'Ecrevisse et sa Fille" (187).  Part of the accomplishment of this book is that pages of illustration are not printed on the verso.  Though illustration-pages are included in the pagination, they have no page numbers printed on them.  There is a place-marking band.  This fourth volume covers Books X through XII of La Fontaine's fables.  At the end of this volume is a T of C of its three books and also an AI for the whole twelve-book, four-volume set.  Very nice!  One learns only at the end of this fourth volume that the set is numbered -- #6861 -- but can one know how big the edition was?

1972 Fables for Little People. Selected and Retold by Anne Webb. Illustrated by Helen Haywood. Hardbound. London: A Little People's Library Book: Young World Productions. $15.54 from March House Books, Dorset, UK, through abe, Oct., '02. 

Here are twenty fables, each with two facing pages, in a 44-page booklet for children. There is a T of C at the front. The versions are careful, and the illustrations playful and charming. In LM, the lion is only tied to a tree; the mouse's task seems easier (9). SW is well told (14). The version of BC is clever: it does not specify the problem, but simply has an old and wise mouse ask "Which of us is going to hang the bell around the cat's neck?" (21). My favorites are the two illustrations for "The Old Lady and the Doctor" (24-25). Haywood's approach to the underlying character of the new wife is clever: paws, eyes, and ears are catlike (39).

1972 Fables in Slang. George Ade. Designed by Bradbury Thompson. Foreword by Jean A. Bradnick. Ornamental designs taken from Louis Henry Sullivan. Limited edition published by Westvaco Corporation (no place given). Boxed. See 1899/1972.

1972 Fables of Tewa Indian Dances As Recorded by Regina Albarado de Cata of San Juan Pueblo. Collected and Arranged by Thelma Clarke. Pamphlet. Portales, New Mexico: Clarke Industries. Bishop Printing Co. $4 from Julian Tanner, Charleston, SC, through Ebay, Feb., '00.

This is one of those pamphlets I include in this collection only because I and others will be tempted to acquire it if I do not include it now. The book presents the aetiological stories behind six native dances: The Deer Dance; The Story of Montezuma; The Story of Mountain Bird, Juan Rey; The Basket Dance; The Yellow Corn Dance; and The Story of the Butterfly and it's [sic] Dance. There really are no fables here. Perhaps the most touching part of the book is the story of the teller of these tales, a woman whose father had come to Antonito, CO from Spain. She married an Indian youth, learned Indian tales, practiced traditional pottery-making, made hundreds of native dolls, and spent eleven years making a tapestry of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

1972 Fables of Wit and Elegance. Edited and with an Introduction by Louis Auchincloss. Dust jacket. NY: Charles Scribner's Sons. $7 at Second Story Books, Fall, '91.

Here is a book I include for just one reason: it shows the range of the word "fable" in the vocabulary of an enlightened contemporary reader and writer. As far as I can tell, "fable" is not used once in this anthology of thirteen recent short stories or its introduction. Note the fascinating criterion for inclusion: Auchincloss chooses writers free from the tyranny of "relevance."

1972 Fábulas Inmorales.  Armando Chulak.  Paperbound.  Buenos Aires, Argentina: Colección Insólita:  Editorial Cultural Argentina, Ediciones Papiro.  $20 from Christian Tottino, Buenos Aires, through eBay, June, '15.

This paperback book begins with a "Prólogo Moral pero no Mucho."   Each of the eighteen fables is about four or five pages in length.  There are no illustrations.  I can only imagine what twists and turns one finds here.  The cover illustration has a blue-and-red striped elephant looking at a large egg.  If I had been in Argentina in 1972, I would have wanted to write some lively political fables!

1972 Favourite Fables from La Fontaine. Translated by John Orpen. Illustrated by Benvenuti. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Printed in Italy. London: The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited. $5.75 from Yesteryear Books Ltd., Moosomin, SK, Canada, through Advanced Book Exchange, July, '00. Extra copy for £3 from Any Amount of Books, London, May, '97.

The graphics of this book are nearly identical with those in the French Fables de La Fontaine (1971/80) and the Italian Le favole di La Fontaine (1971/82). In fact, the book maintains the arrangement of the French original, grouped by animals. Thus the first five fables are about donkeys, and the next five about cats. Numerous realistic, playful, better-than-average colored presentations of animals in courtly human garb. How nice to have run into the same book in three different languages! ©1971 by Editions des Deux Coqs d'Or.

1972 Fedro: Fábulas Esópicas. Colección de Textos Clásicos Latinos. Crestomatía Latina - I. Texto Latino. Barcelona: Bosch, Casa Editorial. $1 in Casa del Libro in Barcelona, July, '86.

Straight Latin poetic texts. Indices at the back.

1972 Fun with Folktales. Eva Moore, Associate Editor of Lucky Book Club. Illustrator not acknowledged. NY: Scholastic Book Services. $.50 at The Book Loft in Santa Cruz, Aug., '89.

The last five pages of this thirty-two-page pamphlet are given to describing fables, presenting one (SW, told in the incorrect version) and recommending others for puppet shows.

1972 Jack Kent's Fables of Aesop. Jack Kent. First edition. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. $10 at Bibelots & Books, Seattle, Aug., '93. Extra copies for $7 at Children's BookAdoption Agency, Kensington, Sept., '91, for $1 at The Nearly New Shop, Mt. Horeb, WI, Aug., '90, for $1.98 from Half-Price, Dallas, Sept., '94, and for $3 from Shirley Mapes, Omaha, Oct., '94.

What a find! The store owner said she had no Aesop except the one that her child was reading. I offered her $5; she accepted and then said she really thought it worth only a dollar! This book adds two fables to those in the later paperback The Fox and the Crow and 10 Other Tales (1976). Kent is very witty here, as he is in the 1974 sequel. GB, FG, and OF are my favorites. Lively watercolors.

1972 Jean de La Fontaine. Fables, Vol. I.  Texte établi et annoté par Erwana Brin.  Bois gravés de Jadoux-Renaud.  Introduction by Raymond Gourdon.  #2166 of 3450.  Hardbound.  Bibliothèque Française de la Nouvelle Librairie de France.  €25 from Librairie Fauguet, Marseille, July, '23.

Here is the first volume of an inexpensive but lovely four-volume set, perhaps first done with other curators in 1958; at any rate there is a copyright of that date included.  This is a serious effort.  I am particularly impressed with Jadoux-Renaud's well chosen and well designed small woodcuts.  There is one for almost every fable here in La Fontaine's first six books.  By the way, there is a surprising "Tome Deuxieme" break between the third and fourth books here.  Does that suggest an original set of four volumes of fables, perhaps along with four volumes of ""Contes et Nouvelles"?  Among the best of those woodcuts are WL (137); FS (149); FK (193); FM (231); and DS (300).  There are also occasional tailpieces, apparently less connected with the subject of the fable.  The beginning of each of La Fontaine's books is marked with Chauveau's original illustration for the first fable in the book.

1972 Jean de La Fontaine. Fables, Vol. II.  Texte établi et annoté par Erwana Brin.  Bois gravés de Jadoux-Renaud.  Hardbound.  Bibliothèque Française de la Nouvelle Librairie de France.  €25 from Librairie Fauguet, Marseille, July, '23.

Here is the second volume of an inexpensive but lovely four-volume set, perhaps first done with other curators in 1958; at any rate there is a copyright of that date included.  This is a serious effort.  I am particularly impressed with Jadoux-Renaud's well chosen and well designed small woodcuts.  There is one for almost every fable here in La Fontaine's last six books.  Readers might be surprised by the book's organization since La Fontaine's Books 7 through 11 are called rather "Première," "Deuxième," etc., while La Fontaine's Book 12 is labelled "Livre Septième." Notes explain that this organization reflects nomenclature as the works originally appeared.  The closing T of C relates these surprising titles to modern numbers for the books.  There is also a closing AI.  Among the best of the woodcuts here are "Coach and Fly" (30); "The Women and the Secret" (60); "The Ass and the Dog" (82); "The Oyster and the Litigants" (118); and "The Old Man and the Three Youths" (191, 192).  There are again occasional tailpieces.  The beginning of each of La Fontaine's books is marked with Chauveau's original illustration for the first fable in the book.

1972 Jean de La Fontaine. Contes et Nouvelles, Vol. I.  Texte établi et annoté par Erwana Brin.  Bois gravés de Jadoux-Renaud.  #2166 of 3450.  Hardbound.  Bibliothèque Française de la Nouvelle Librairie de France.  €25 from Librairie Fauguet, Marseille, July, '23.

Here is the third volume of an inexpensive but lovely four-volume set, perhaps first done with other curators in 1958; at any rate there is a copyright of that date included.  I include these two volumes of "contes" and "nouvelles" because they are part of the set.  Jadoux-Renaud's woodcut illustrations are here more varied in style than for the fables' two volumes.  Some are framed quadrangles; others are free-standing small designs.  This volume has a stamp on its rear endpaper of a former owner, M. and Mme Patrick Pardoen in Bitche.

1972 Jean de La Fontaine. Contes et Nouvelles, Vol. II.  Texte établi et annoté par Erwana Brin.  Bois gravés de Jadoux-Renaud.  #2166 of 3450.  Hardbound.  Bibliothèque Française de la Nouvelle Librairie de France.  €25 from Librairie Fauguet, Marseille, July, '23.

Here is the fourth volume of an inexpensive but lovely four-volume set, perhaps first done with other curators in 1958; at any rate there is a copyright of that date included.  I include these two volumes of "contes" and "nouvelles" because they are part of the set.  Jadoux-Renaud's woodcut illustrations are here more varied in style than for the fables' two volumes.  Some are framed quadrangles; others are free-standing small designs.  This volume has a stamp on its rear endpaper of a former owner, M. and Mme Patrick Pardoen in Bitche.

1972 La Fontaine Basni. Illustrations by (W.) Cremonini. Paperbound. Sophia: Iarodia Mladek. $9.95 from obichamabba through E. Stoyanov, Hemet, CA, on eBay, May, ‘07.

Here is a Bulgarian version of the same book I have found in English (1958), French (1961), and Hebrew (1994). I have yet to find the original Italian. Like the French, this title speaks only of La Fontaine without reference to Aesop. The fables covered are exactly the same, though the order here is different from the order in the French version. The first two there, for example, are the last two fables presented here. The illustrations here are poor in color by comparison with those in all three other versions. The T of C here is at the back, followed by a colophon and four pages of advertisements. Here is my first book in Bulgarian, a lucky find on eBay!

1972 LaFontaine den Hikayeler Arslan Ile Fare. Itimat Kitabevi. Paperbound. Istanbul: Iyigun Yayinlari C. Serisi No: 21. $9.99 from Europhila, Istanbul, through eBay, Dec., '05. 

This is a deteriorating pamphlet of 24 pages measuring 5½" x 7½". It pictures LM on its cover in very simple and even garish colors. There are simple black-and-white designs inside, ranging from small to full-page. I can recognize the following fables: LM, DW, "The Eye of the Master," AL, "The Man and the Lion," WSC, "The Fish and the Net," and BW. Nothing is holding the cover or any of the pages together.

1972 La Fontaine: Fables. Préface et Commentaires de Pierre Clarac. Paperbound. Printed in France. Le Livre de Poche: Librairie Générale Française. 10 Francs from a Seine Bookseller, Paris, August, '99.

Here is the most basic of straight presentations of La Fontaine in a paperback edition. Clarac adds a sixteen-page preface before and a set of materials after the full collection of the fables. These materials include a biographical sketch of La Fontaine's life and a few pages each on La Fontaine's way of working, criticism of the fables, the author's views found in the fables, and the world as seen by La Fontaine. There is an AI at the end, followed by a T of C.

1972 La Fontaine: Fables choisies mises en vers. Introduction, note et relevé de variantes par Georges Couton. Édition illustrée de 32 reproductions. (c)1962 Garnier Frères. Paris: Garnier Frères. See 1962/72.

1972 Leonardo Da Vinci: Favole e Leggende.  Interpretate e trascritte da Bruno Nardini.  Illustrazioni di Adriana Saviozzi Mazza.  Margaret Meek.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Florence: Giunti e Centro Internazionale del Libro.  €15 from a Buchinist, Paris, August, '14.  

On a European trip just finished, I found two copies of Leonardo's fables, this in Italian and another in Danish.  I already had three copies, one in English from 1973 and two distinct volumes in German, from 1973 and 1975.  It turns out that this Italian copy is the original on which the English, German first volume, and Danish are all based.  I thought I was finding just "yet another version."  As I wrote of the English edition, this is a lovely book, especially for the beautiful colored art on its big pages.  The fables range in type and quality.  Some deal more than the Aesopic tradition with the elements:  fire, water, stone, and steel.  Some are good Aesopic stuff:  "The Mouse, the Weasel, and the Cat;" "The Tree and the Pole;" "The Ermine;" "The Walnut and the Bell Tower;" and "The Falcon and the Duck."  The morals are surprisingly traditional, allegorical, and moralistic.  Two of the best are statements of faith:  "The Pelican" and "The Eagle Burning Off His Feathers."  The best illustration among many good ones is of the butterfly and the flame.  Like the German first volume, this edition puts the Owl and smaller birds onto its cover; it also puts it onto its dust jacket.  Here the T of C is at the book's end.  This copy comes from the second edition, published in December, 1972.  The first edition came out from the Centro Internazionale del Libro in June of 1972.

1972 Les Fables de la Fontaine. Monique Gorde. Hardbound. Paris: Collection "Super Luxe" #6: Éditions Lito. $5.90 from Marie Gervais, St-Urbain-Premier, Canada, through eBay, Sept., ‘07.

Here Lito presents a different collection of fables from those in three other books which Lito put out illustrated by Monique Gorde. For two of them I guessed dates of 1970 and 1975. The third carries a date of 1972. Two of them belonged to the Collection "Belles Années," while the third belonged to "Contes Choisis." Here we have eight fables either two or four pages in length. The illustrations are simple and large. Maybe the most striking figure in the book is the fox thirsting for grapes. The figures in FS are also strong. Other stories include TH, MM, "L'Ane et le Petit Chien," "Le Coche et la Mouche," "Le Chat, la Belette, et le Petit Lapin," and 2P. The back cover lists nine other books in the collection, and the spine numbers this "6."

1972 Les Fables de la Fontaine (No. 1). Illustrations de Monique Gorde. Hardbound. Paris: Collection "Belles Années": Éditions Lito. $4.75 from Marie Gervais, St-Urbain-Premier, Canada, through eBay, Nov., '04.

This book represents, I believe, a later version of a similar volume I have listed under "1970?" Both have "Lito 40341" on the front cover. This copy adds a large "1" on the front cover. It takes the list of books in the same collection from the last page, doubles its extent, and puts the new list on the back cover. This copy is printed in Spain rather than Italy. It adds printing on the spine: "Les Fables de La Fontaine No. 1" besides a 4 that seems to represent its number in the series. (The series now includes a Les Fables de La Fontaine No. 2). I will repeat here my comments from the earlier printing. Two pages apiece for eleven fables, given in LaFontaine's original text. A pleasing large-format children's book. Among the illustrations, that of a fisherman in a newspaper hat is perhaps the most charming. The town and country mice, well contrasted in their clothing, have been enjoying champagne.

1972 Les Fables de la Fontaine (No. 2). Illustrées par Monique Gorde. Hardbound. Paris: Collection "Belles Années": Éditions Lito. $10 from Colette Durand through eBay, March, '09. One extra copy from an unknown source.

A propos of the book published as Fables de la Fontaine (No. 1) in 1972 I wrote that there was now a Fables de la Fontaine (No. 2) in the series. The first La Fontaine volume had apparently been published alone earlier; I have that copy under "1970?" Now I have found two copies of that Fables de la Fontaine (No. 2) in the same format as the first and illustrated by the same artist. This book has "Lito 40356" on the front cover and it has a large "2" not only on its spine but in the lower right corner of the front cover. The spine also has "14" to give its number in the series "Collection Belles Années." The whole list of eighteen books in the collection is given on the back cover, as it was in the first volume. There are again eleven fables. Two stretch onto a third page. This is a pleasing large-format children's book. The illustration for DS is surprising for its violence. The dog struggles for survival as a hare runs away from the water. Is this water in which the dog could have seen a reflection? By contrast, the very next illustration suggests nicely what the stag saw in the water.

1972 Les Impertinentes Fables de Jean Anouilh. Hartmut Krämer. Illustrations par Lemke-Pricken, Düsseldorf. Paperbound. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterwegs Neusprachliche Bibliothek: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg. Gift of Klaus Reinhard, August, '06. Extra copy for €15 from Buchexplorer.com, Eppenbrunn, Germany, Sept., '06.

The subtitle flows over into the introduction of Krämer: "15 fables choisies, avec une préface et des annotations détaillées pour l'explication et la comparaison littéraires par Hartmut Krämer." The texts of these fables are taken from the original edition by Le Table Ronde in 1962. This edition has two advantages not found in that edition. First, there are the clever designs by Lemke-Pricken. Secondly, there are the two helpful sections after each fable: a vocabulary and "Indications pour l'explication de la fable." I wish I had had these when I was reading through Anouilh's fables with Jean-Pierre Karegeye in Berkeley! They will be very helpful for my next encounter with Anouilh's fables.

1972 Mark Twain's Fables of Man.  Edited with an introduction by John S. Tuckey.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Berkeley: University of California Press.  $27.20 from Turn-The-Page-Books, Seattle, through Biblio, Nov., '20.

I have seen this title pass by a number of times in the past and wondered.  I finally plunged when Biblio offered a discount.  Let me pause a moment before commenting on the book to note that it renewed a wonderful contact from the past.  Peter Kohler, it turns out, is the proprietor, with his wife, of this online bookstore.  I knew Peter when he worked at Powell's in Portland in the "Mythology" section.  While there, he watched out for unusual fable books for me.  At some point, we lost touch.  Now he wrote back to me immediately as "you ol' Aesopian."  What a lovely and surprising renewal of personal contact!  About the book?  The book gathers previously unpublished writings of Twain.  It turns out to contain two items listed as -- appropriately, I believe -- fables.  "Goose Fable" (150-51) tells of a goose mother instructing her daughter.  Who are the gods?  Human beings, and geese must be grateful for all that humans do, since it is for their good.  And whom can this daughter trust in times of trouble?  The cow.  Tuckey sees Twain suggesting "that man also was too trusting toward his own gods" (149).  In "The Fable of the Yellow Terror" (426), Twain calls up early history.  The butterflies were the representatives of civilization and they imposed it on every other "nation" among the animals.  Butterflies had stings and sold honey.  Only the simple bees resisted the butterflies: they did not want "civilization."  Finally the butterflies announced that the bees were a "yellow peril."  The butterflies vanquished the bees, who began to like honey and to buy it.  Then one tribe of bees learned two things: how to make honey and how to kill.  Hurray for civilization!  But that tribe of bees was ready now to outproduce, outsell, and outsting the butterflies.  Maybe they should never have started the "yellow peril," as a wise grasshopper tells them.  Tuckey comments on each writing and dates it carefully.

1972 Mikro-Basni: Micro-Fables. Vladimir Zubikhin. Illustrated by Stanislav Vlasovskiy. Paperbound. Volgograd: Nizhne-Volzhskoje Knizhnoje Izdatelstvo. $5 from Viktor Romanchenko, Ukraine, through eBay, Sept., '04. 

The seller describes this forty-eight page pamphlet as an."interesting collection of Soviet poet-fablist." Each page has its own fable. The texts are usually only two or four lines long. It seems that the vivid cartoons carry the sense of these stories. I like the cigarette-smoking grenade (12) about to pull its own fuse. There is something that looks like it includes a wolf and a lamb on 17. There is a T of C on the inside back cover. This page has been repaired.

1972 Nippon Warai Banashi (Funny Fables of Japan). Yasuo Mazkawa. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Tokyo: Kodansha Bunko. $15 from Books Abound, Farmington, MI, through abe, Oct., '99.

I suspect that this book offers more folktales than fables on its 166 pages. There seem to be fourteen stories, from five to seventeen pages in length, with at least one black-and-white drawing for each. I do not recognize anything from Aesopic fables in the illustrations. The dust-jacket pictures show a geisha fox and a rural thatched building behind a horse and rider. The covers show a very small building and a rider holding his horse's tail.

1972 Once Upon A Time: The Fairy Tale World of Arthur Rackham. Edited by Margery Darrell. A Studio Book. NY: Viking Press. $5 at Shakespeare, Berkeley, Dec., '87.

This work contains excellent reproductions of Rackham's art for Aesop (235-48) and other subjects. In fact they are the best reproductions of Rackham that I have seen, particularly the colored work. After five pages of introduction, the book consists entirely of excerpts from Rackham's works. Well worth the price!

1972 Panchatantra (Russian).  A. Syrkina.  Illustrations by U. Konnov.  Paperbound.  Moscow: Chydosestsennary Literatura.  $19.99 from migrace, Lviv, Ukraine, through Ebay, Nov., '20.

Here is a paperback book of 368 pages.  4¾" x 6½".  The beginning of each of the five books is marked with a full-page line drawing: lion and bull (28); four friends (164); birds bringing fire (220); monkey on a dolphin (280); and two people at oceanside (218).  The colored covers offer large simple illustrations of the teacher with the three learners and, on the back, TT.  A web search revealed no other copies of this book.  The only copy that showed up after lots of searching was this copy mislabeled from this seller!

1972 Peterkin: An Educational Fable. By Charles M. Solley. Illustrated by Jane Mitchell. First printing. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, Inc. $1.50 from Twice Sold Tales, Nampa, Idaho, March, '97.

This somewhat simplistic book follows Peter Peterkin from the third grade up to college graduation. By conversing with animal teachers, he gets very partial and mostly unsuccessful strategies on how to get educated. From Prof. Bottomley, the frog, he learns to imitate exactly what his teacher does. From a bee, he learns that touches can have meaning. From a butterfly, he learns the value of drugs and fermented liquids. From a sheep, he learns the value of following what others do. From a dog, he learns the value of obeying. Reflecting with Bottomley, he tries for a while to do as little as possible and only to obey direct orders. In all this the most stimulating thought may come from Bottomley. In his frog culture, the worst students are sent to school to become teachers, so that they can learn from their students. They get, as it were, a second chance by staying in school. Peter has at last a good human teacher in the next grade and learns to follow freely the suggestions of an interested person. His road leads him at college to develop a friendship with Socrates, the mainframe computer. He ultimately learns that there need to be human teachers besides good computers like Socrates. Only human teachers can share their lives. Since education never ends, Solley refuses to give an ending to the story. "If you insist on an ending, you'll have to write it yourself."

1972 Reflections: Fables in the Sufi Tradition. Idries Shah. Paperback. Printed in USA. Baltimore: Penguin Books Inc. $5.00 from Green Apple, San Francisco, Nov., '98. Extra copy for $10 from Trance Works, Long Beach, May, '98.

The book starts with an excellent story and strong comment: "Do you imagine that fables exist only to amuse or instruct, and are based upon fictions? The best ones are delineations of what happens in real life, in the community and in the individual's mental processes" (2). Themes that occur in many of the items include these: many people do not want to learn and to activate intelligence; they want to follow authority; they want to be congratulated and not challenged; humility is a means, not an end; do not announce your humility. This is often a book of proverbs with short commentary. Many readers might find Shah unpleasantly critical and even supercilious. Some of the best stories in the book include "Original Perfection" (19), "The Lizard and the Spider" (23), "The Intelligent Man" (33), "Why He Was Chosen" (37), "The Reason" (39), "The Toads in the Castle" (40), "The Donkey and the Cactus" (44), and "Contradictions" (72, a response to Aesop's "The Traveler and the Satyr"). Challenging remarks are on 26, 35,49, 55, 56, 81, 120, 131, and 145. I was disappointed in this book. I wanted more and better stories and fewer remarks.

1972 Simtas Pasakecios: J.A. Krylovas: Rinktine 103. Translated into Lithuanian by J.Valaitis. A. Laptyev (et al?). Paperbound. Chicago: Spaude M. Morkuno. $6.95 from Modestas Rimkus, Boston, through eBay, Jan., '13.

Here are 103 Krylovian fables -- of the 200 or so that he created -- translated into Lithuanian in a sturdy paperback book 6¼" x 9⅛". Many are illustrated with the familiar black-and-white illustrations of A. Laptyev. The book looks as though it may have been the private publication of Valaitis himself. Can this be the same Jonas Valaitis that was a prominent Lithuanian physician in Chicago and died in 2006? And might that "500" on the verso of the title-page indicate that 500 copies were printed? If so, that fact would only make this a more unusual treasure! The introduction concludes, apparently, with a remembrance of Krylov at the UN, with the likes of U Thant, John Kennedy, and Dag "Hammarskjoldui." The place of publication on the title-page is "Cikaga." I count twenty illustrations in all. From other versions using Laptyev's work, he seems to have done twenty-four illustrations. Not all the illustrations here are signed with the familiar "A. Λ." and a date like '46 or '47. There is an AI at the back. 201 pages. 

1972 Tales Sur la Pointe des Pieds. Gilles Vigneault, Translated by Paul Allard. Dust Jacket. Hardbound. Erin, Ontario: Press Porcépic. $15 from Max Weder Books, Vancouver, B.C. through abe, Feb., '98. 

Seventy-nine bilingual pages, generally with one pair of pages for each fable. There is a T of C at the front. Might one describe these generally as "poetic stories"? In any case, they are wistful and full of magic. Many are dreamlike, like "Revenge" (11). A child plants a light bulb in a garden and years later returns to find a streetlamp there (17). My favorite is "The Late-Comers" (9).

1972 Tales the Peacock Might Have Told. Rusty Jorgensen. #146 of 199 handprinted copies. Signed by Rusty Jorgensen. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Homewood, CA: The Full Circle Press. $15 from The Antiquarian Archive, Los Altos, CA, April, '96.

Here are seventeen fables, each with at least one woodcut. The cuts are done in various colors. The last of them, for "The Peacock Returns," brings together three colors in one woodcut. "The Lion & the Elephant" is well done. The elephant tries to run in their unfair run-and-climb race and happens to knock the lion out of his tree all three times. The race is finally postponed. In "The Earthworm and the Snail," there is a dramatic jumping-contest. The worm goes first and jumps over three inches high when a robin goes by… There is a good new take on what might happen between a tortoise and a hare, but it has to do not with a race but with housing. Similarly, GA is nicely replayed, first with plenty of intermediate steps and then with a new sequel. "The Hedgehogs" is a good fable on outward signs associated with gender, like hair length. "The Cat" may be the best of all. Other stories are closer to simple jokes. Plenty of them are fun. The printing is surprising because paragraphs that quote stay indented throughout the paragraph. Also "grasshopper" (in the opening T of C), "advice," "kangaroos," refrigerator," "opened," and "no one" are misspelled. Jorgensen closes with a clever colophon that indicates, among other things, that the book was printed by the illustrator, illustrated by the binder, and bound by the author.

1972 The Big Tree and the Little Bush: An Aesop Fable. Retold by Philip and Patricia Spensley; edited by D.H. Stott. Illustrated by Jean Galt. First printing. Paperbound. Agincourt, Ontario: Gage Educational Publishing, Ltd. $10.13 from Trylinski Books, Pangman, Saskatchewan, Canada, Oct., '11.

This is a 16-page pamphlet offering a well-told traditional fable with simple, pleasing cuts in four or five colors. The bush laments that it is small. It wants to be big, like the tree. The tree counsels the bush to be happy as a bush. For example, when the bush says "You can see a long way and I can't," the tree counters "I don't always like what I see." Soon enough the woodcutters appear and the inevitable occurs. Just before it is chopped down, the tree asks the bush "Now aren't you glad you're a bush?" The bush ends the story declaring that he is happy to be a bush. The best visual may be the two-page spread on 8-9 that shows all the fable's characters. A very nice find!

1972 The Faber Storybook. Edited by Kathleen Lines. Illustrated by Alan Howard. Paper. London and Boston: Faber and Faber. See 1961/72/86.

1972 The Fable of Fat Fanny or What Could Happen to You If You Don't Stick to Your Diet! Dean Norman. Hardbound. Cleveland: The Sunbeam Library: American Greetings. $0.99 from K & S Pentz, Montgomery, PA through eBay, Dec., '10.

I originally guessed at a publication date of 1960 for this book and was happily corrected by the author and artist, who wrote and illustrated the book in 1971 and so guessed at a publication date of 1972.  How nice of Mr. Norman to get in touch with us!  His email noted that the publisher changed the cover and nothing else to republish it in 1974.  We also have that version in the collection.  As I originally wrote, this is a small hardbound book of twenty pages about 4¼" x 4¾".  It is inscribed "To Barry From a secret admirer."  The title-page changes the sub-title to: "If you have trouble sticking to your diet, maybe this story will give you inspiration."  Fat Fanny starts as an egg on a blade of grass.  The egg hatches and starts eating.  Soon she is a big fat centipede-like blob.  Others tease her, saying things like "Your mother must have been a dirigible."  Fanny decides on a crash diet and spins herself into a cocoon.  When Fat Fanny hatches out of her cocoon, she is a gorgeous butterfly.  The cartoon here may be the only X-rated cartoon of a butterfly that I have seen!  I never thought of a butterfly's body as having breasts!  Here comes the shock of this little book. When one turns the page, one reads "Then a bird ate her."  "Moral: Better to eat like a bird than to be eaten by one." 

1972 The Hare and the Tortoise and The Tortoise and the Hare/La Liebre y la Tortuga and La Tortuga y la Liebre. William Pene Du Bois and Lee Po. Illustraciones de William Pene Du Bois. Garden City: Doubleday and Company. $4.95 at Children's BookAdoption Agency, Kensington, MD, Sept., '91.

One of the most imaginative books I have found in a while, sitting on the floor of a wonderful basement full of kids' books. Barbara Yoffee, who showed me many books, rejoiced with me in my very own "find." Bilingual on each page, with delightful and witty facing illustrations. Two stories. The first is the traditional Aesopic tale with additions. The prize is a six-course dinner at "The Bird & Bottle." The male hare does not sleep but stops and joins in at a hog-calling contest where hogs do the calling. The hare laughs at the rain-dance of some Indians, but a downpour carries the tortoise down a gutter to the sea, the finish line. The female tortoise, who wears a great bathing cap, consoles the hare and enjoys the six courses. The second story has the queen of all fish suffering from a hook, surrounded by doctor and nurse fish. The tortoise volunteers hare's liver as a remedy, and soon the story plays the old folktale motif of "It's so valuable that I left it at home. Let me go back and get it." The hare no longer goes anywhere near the tortoise.

1972 The Miser and His Bag of Gold.  Carol Cunningham. Hardbound. #60 of 75, miniature.  Sunflower Press.  $75 from Tracy Bradbury, Brooklyn, NY, August, '11.

Here is a lovely miniature of some fourteen pages.  The moral is well said: "Hoarded wealth is useless wealth."  Not illustrated.  This tiny book has impressive gold and white covers.  Tracy Bradbury specializes in selling miniature books.

1972 The Mouse's Wedding: A Fable Retold. By Ruth Belov Gross. Pictures by Susan Swan. Pamphlet. Printed in USA. NY: Scholastic Inc. $3.50 from S. Howlett-West Books, Modesto, CA, through ABE, Nov., ‘01.

I have often seen this tale presenting a father looking for a husband worthy of his daughter. Here it is a male mouse himself who goes out looking for the "daughter of the most powerful thing in the world." Otherwise he wants no wife at all, as he tells each potential father-in-law. The illustration of the sun is impressive; it says better than words the place the sun has in the world. This mouse rides a balloon to find the cloud. He rides a kite to find the wind. He then wears stilts to find the tower. The book says that it is "based on a 12th-century retelling by Marie de France from 'The Mouse Who Sought a Wife.'"

1972 The Panchatantra. Translated from the Sanskrit by Arthur W. Ryder. Illustrated by Y.G. Srimati. Boxed. #108 of 1500, signed by the artist. With the publisher's announcement and Limited Editions Club Monthly Letter #461. The George Macy Companies. NY: The Limited Editions Club. $55 from Oak Knoll, Feb., '92.

This is a beautiful and hefty edition combining Ryder's 1925 translation, for which see my comments under 1925/26, and Srimati's art. The latter includes twelve color plates listed on xvii and good occasional in-text etchings in brown ink (e.g., 175). My favorites among the former are "Right-Mind and Wrong-Mind" (144), "Slow and Spot escape the hunter" (220), and "The loyal mungoose" (337).

1972 The Wind and the Sun. Retold and illustrated by Tomie de Paola. Theodore Clymer, Senior Author, Reading 360. A Magic Circle Book. Lexington, MA: Ginn and Company. $3.15 at Prince and Pauper, San Diego, Aug., '93.

A nice little book that tells the story well. De Paola's cloudy wind is especially imaginative.

1972 Tilkinin Romani: Ikinci Baski. Adapted by Hilmi Bilginer. Eskin Matbaasi. Paperbound. Istanbul: Isil Kitabevi Yayinlari: Cocuk Klasikleri #3: Isil Kitabevi. $5 from Ugur Yurttutan, Istanbul, Feb., '05.

I find four fable illustrations among the stories collected on 95 pages in this children's book. One finds the fox and cat on 25, the rooster and fox on 55, the bear with his nose caught in a log on 71, and the monk with a fox and a chasuble on 80. The front cover has a nice colored picture of King Lion's court, with many animals in attendance.

1972 Ulrich Boner Der Edelstein: Faksimile der ersten Druckausgabe Bamberg 1461. Doris Fouquet. Boxed set. Hardbound. Stuttgart: Verlag Müller und Schindler. €50 from Kunstantiquariat Joachim Lührs auf der Fleetinsel, Hamburg, Germany, April, '09.

This book is the companion to the facsimile of Boner's Der Edelstein. It is well put together by a good librarian. Fouquet helps the reader to assess Boner as a fabulist and then Pfister as a publisher. She pays special attention to the woodcuts; I believe they have attracted much more scholarly attention than Boner's texts. My own investigations led me to disagree with Fouquet about the order in which the three elements of a given page were printed. The one botched page seems to indicate rather that the print is superimposed upon the picture than vice-versa. This book gathers a helpful set of illustrations to show the points that Fouquet makes. For me the material at the end of this book was the most helpful. From Fouquet's list of editions, I was actually able to find three available digitally, the editions of Eschenburg, Benecke, and Pfeiffer. They were my major help as I worked my way through Pfister's rendition of Boner's text. My work did not raise my estimation for Pfister as a scholarly publisher. Lines and words are skipped. Some sentences make no sense because the most important word is left out. In this respect, I believe Steinhöwel did the better job of the two. Perhaps the most maddeningly botched text of all is the epilogue, in which Boner gives a serious sense of what he thinks he is doing. Fouquet also includes "Inhaltsangaben," summaries of the eighty-six fables that Pfister publishes. Oh, how I wish that those summaries had been transcriptions of the actual texts! I sought the latter in vain. Apparently, all of the textual editions are formed -- appropriately enough -- from Boner's manuscripts rather than from Pfister's book. Of the three I worked through, only one took Boner's book as a serious textual witness. Fouquet is also not absolutely reliable in her renditions of Boner's stories.

1972 Vom klugen Esel und andere Tierfabeln. Ins Deutsche übertragen von Marika Vanickova. Illustriert von Ota Janecek. Hardbound. Dust jacket. Prag: Artia. DM 25 from Antiquariat Wengerzink, Paderborn, July, '01. Extra copy from Antiquariat am Dom, Trier, July, '01.

This is a curious large-format book that I found on two separate excursions, one to visit an old friend in Paderborn and the other with a school excursion from Heidelberg to Trier. There are two TC's at the back covering the same 207 pages. One reports consecutively on ten evenings of story telling. The other catalogues the stories told by each story-teller, e.g., stories told by the dog Rex about the wolf and fox, or stories told by Peter the horse about the jackal. It seems that each group has one story from each of the ten animals. The early stories are as much folktale as fable, with a heavy emphasis on aetiological stories. New to me is the story of the fox talking the rabbit into fishing with his then-long tail. In fact, he places the rabbit right in front of the turtle's hole. The turtle grabs so hard on the rabbit's tail that the fox needs to pull with the rabbit's ears to keep him from going under. So the rabbit loses almost all of his tail and ends up with very long ears (15). There are occasional line-drawings along the way and perhaps one full-page colored illustration for each of the ten groupings. They are whimsical, primitive, playful. Typical of them may be TT on 101. Perhaps the strongest of them shows the ape riding on the turtle's back and learning that he is to sacrifice his heart for the turtle's wife (183). Of course, he will tell the turtle that he has not brought his heart along and that they need to return to get it. Reflection on the apportioning of various stories to various speakers here would be fascinating. I would love to spend more time with this book! I was disturbed by the typo early in the first set of stories: "Und Peter Vegann zu erzählen" (14).

1972/75 Tina la Tortuga y Carlos el Conejo/Tina the Turtle and Carlos the Rabbit. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. 1975 Printing. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, Nov., '95.

This copy is nearly identical with that from the 1990 printing, but there are some clear differences. The cover colors are different; here blue is prominent and Carlos' shoes are brown. There is no text on the back cover here. The introduction on the reverse of the title-page is different and has an acknowledged author, Carlos Saavedra. There are no advertisements at the back of this edition. See my comments under the 1990 printing.

1972/77 Phaedrus: Fabeln: Text.  Herausgegeben von Otto Leggewie.  Dritte, verbesserte Auflage.  Paperbound.  Münster: Aschendorffs Sammlung Lateinischer und Griechischer Klassiker:  Verlag Aschendorff.  €5 from Wissenschaftliche Versandbuchhandlung und Antiquariat Skulima, Westhofen, Germany, through ZVAB, Jan., '16.

The title page continues "Auswahl mit Proben aus dem Deutschen, Französischen und Englischen Fabelschatz."  Here is a German schoolbook presenting texts of forty-five fables of Phaedrus and then a wide selection of related fables in German, French, and English.  The selections in the latter portion include Boner, Luther, LaF, and James on WL.  Further contributions come from Lessing, Steinhöwel, Caxton, Gleim, Schlegel, Samaniego, Goethe, Pauli, Hagedorn, and Ramler.  Lucky students!

1972/77 Phaedrus: Fabeln: Kommentar.  Herausgegeben von Otto Leggewie. Dritte, verbesserte Auflage.  Paperbound.  Münster: Aschendorffs Sammlung Lateinischer und Griechischer Klassiker:  Verlag Aschendorff.  €5 from Wissenschaftliche Versandbuchhandlung und Antiquariat Skulima, Westhofen, Germany, through ZVAB, Jan., '16.

The title page continues "Auswahl mit Proben aus dem Deutschen, Französischen und Englischen Fabelschatz."  Here is a German schoolbook well integrated with its companion volume's texts.  For Phaedrus' Latin, there are both vocabulary and comments.  For the non-German "related texts," there are translations and vocabulary.  I would have loved to learn literature with textbooks like these!

1972/78 Leonardo Da Vinci: Favole e Leggende.  Interpretate e trascritte da Bruno Nardini.  Illustrazioni di Adriana Saviozzi Mazza.  Quinta edizione.  Hardbound.  Florence: Giunti-Nardini Editore.  $7.50 from Second Story Book Warehouse, Rockville, MD, Nov., '19.

Here is a fifth edition of a book we have had from its earlier 1972 printing.  The publisher has changed from Giunti e Centro Internazionale del Libro to Giunti-Nardini Editore.  As I mention there, we now have copies in English, German, Danish, and Italian.  As I wrote of the English edition, this is a lovely book, especially for the beautiful colored art on its big pages.  The fables range in type and quality.  Some deal more than the Aesopic tradition with the elements:  fire, water, stone, and steel.  Some are good Aesopic stuff:  "The Mouse, the Weasel, and the Cat;" "The Tree and the Pole;" "The Ermine;" "The Walnut and the Bell Tower;" and "The Falcon and the Duck."  The morals are surprisingly traditional, allegorical, and moralistic.  Two of the best are statements of faith: "The Pelican" and "The Eagle Burning Off His Feathers."  The best illustration among many good ones is of the butterfly and the flame.  Like the German first volume, this edition puts the Owl and smaller birds onto its cover.  Here the T of C is at the book's end.

1972/84/90 Tina la Tortuga y Carlos el Conejo/Tina the Turtle and Carlos the Rabbit. Dorothy Sword Bishop. Fábulas Bilingües. The Bilingual Series. Lincolnwood, IL: National Textbook Company. $6.95 at Modern Language Bookstore, Georgetown, Oct., '90.

Well told, with lively and enjoyable illustrations. The argument and bet are very well handled. The distinctive feature of this series is that near-identical books in Spanish and English are bound together.

 

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1973

1973 A Type Specimen of Garamont: Several Fables of Aesop. From the translation of S.A. Handford. Illustrated by Erin Gamble. Limited edition of 975. Printed in Nevada City, CA. Nevada City, CA: Harold Berliner. $55 from The Bookstall, San Francisco, July, '99.

See my two other editions from Berliner, using Lutetia (1970) and Baskerville (1971). A first page gives a lovely little history of Garamont, which was first created in 1540, only eleven years after French printing first used roman type. Six fables from Handford's Penguin translation give Berliner a chance to show off specimens of his lovely type with 12, 10, and 8 point roman and italic. The illustrations are done in a style I would call psychedelic. It may be hard, as in SS, to get the gestalt of the picture. "The Wasp on the Snake's Head" in fact has the wasp buzzing around away from the snake's head! I enjoy most BW, TB and the cover picture of a lion reading Aesop's Fables. I had missed this booklet before in Sebastopol; now I had to pay for the miss, since this booklet does not show up frequently! There is one printer's goof, alas!, to note in this little book. In the story about the fox learning to divide for the lion, Handford's Penguin has the following sentence: "The lion asked who taught him to share things in that way. 'What happened to the donkey,' he answered." This booklet has: "The lion asked who taught him to share things in that way. 'What happened to the donkey?' he answered." What a difference a question-mark makes!

1973 Aesop Fables. Written by M. France (?). Art by Rudy V. Arubal (?). Paperbound. Cor. Soler, Manila, Philippines: English Edition: National Book Store, Inc., Philippines. $5.99 from Angelo Bernardo, Quezon City, Philippines, August, '05.

Here is a much-used comic book giving all 40 of its pages to the presentation of fables. The edges show a good deal of wear, portions of pages are taped back together, and one middle page (15-16) is inserted backwards. I put question marks after the names of the author and illustrator because the last letters of their names are no longer on the cover, if they ever were. Only the covers are in color here. Each fable gets one or two pages. The two exceptions I noted are CW, which gets three pages (23-25), and ""Frailty, Thy Name Is Woman!" (The Widow of Ephesus), which gets four pages (32-35). The fable on the marriage of the sun involves the supposed marriage of the sun and moon at an eclipse (13). The cat woman eats the mouse in rather gross fashion (25). The English suffers once or twice, as in "The young wife was won't having an old man make love to her" (36). The frozen snake is picked up by a woman instead of the usual man. The lions are unsuccessfully portrayed. What a great ephemeral find!

1973 Aesop: His Book. from Notes Collected by Ruth J. Heffelfinger. James Cummings: Stillwater, Minnesota. Four copies, the second found for $2 at Midway in St. Paul in July, '85, while the first was on order for $5; the third a gift from Elizabeth Willems, Christmas, '86; the fourth for $2 from James Cummings, Stillwater, Nov., '92.

A lovely and careful little presentation by a real soul-mate. I will spend a long time rereading this book. There is a nice pedigree on the inside covers. Some of the history seems spottier than other parts, but it is all lively and has a good sense of context. This book was introduced to me as standard Aesop stuff when I asked at Midway.

1973 Aesop's Fables. Translated by John Warrington. Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe. Hardbound. Dust jacket. London: J.M. Dent & Sons/NY: E.P. Dutton & Company. See 1961/73.

1973 Aesop's Fables in Song. George Mysels. Drawings by Frank Miller. Paperbound. Delaware Water Gap, PA: Shawnee Press. $2.95 from Brian Henry, Trenton, GA, through eBay, June, '04. 

"For solo or unison voices with piano and guitar (or Autoharp)." Piano accompaniments by Lou Hayward. I had found Mysels' record, produced in 1975, several years ago, done by the same press. As there are twenty-four songs sung there, there is music here for twenty-four fable songs to be played and sung. The illustrations are small and simple. This large pamphlet was originally sold by Clarus Music in Yonkers, NY. Keep looking for fables, and you never know what you will find!

1973 Aesop's Fables: 30 Fables from Thomas Bewick's Works, Volume IV (Memorial Edition). A Portfolio of Wood Engravings. Printed from the original blocks by Letterio Calapai. Couplets by Chester Clayton Long. Introduction by Harold Haydon. Outside the numbered set of one hundred copies: twenty-three originals and seven reproductions (xeroxes). Boxed. Glencoe, IL: Workshop of Letterio Calapai. $55 at Titles, Highland Park, March, '93.

Excellent prints from the original blocks of The Fables of Aesop (1818). The title's reference to Volume IV is apparently to Thomas Ward's five-volume memorial edition of Bewick's works, published in 1885-7. The best of this set of illustrations include FK (VIII), "The Thief and the Boy" (XII), "The Drunken Husband" (XVI), "The Eagle and the Fox" (XXIV), and "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Dog" (XXX). The couplets seem perfunctory to me. Do not miss the good print of Bewick's homage to his predecessors as frontispiece in the booklet accompanying the prints. A very nice find at the end of a weekend where I mostly came up dry.

1973 Aesop's Fables: 30 Fables from Thomas Bewick's Works, Volume IV (Memorial Edition).  Couplets by Chester Clayton Long.  Printed from the blocks of Thomas Bewick by Letterio Calapai.  Introduction by Harold Haydon.  #41 of 100; signed by Calapai and Long.  Paperbound.  Glencoe, IL: Workshop of Letterio Calapai.  $100 from Manx11 through Ebay, Dec., '18.

There is another copy of this lovely work in the collection, but it is unnumbered.  This copy is #41 of 100 and is signed by Calapai and Long.  As I wrote then, it offers excellent prints from the original blocks of The Fables of Aesop (1818).  The title's reference to Volume IV is apparently to Thomas Ward's five-volume memorial edition of Bewick's works, published in 1885-7.  The best of this set of illustrations include FK (VIII), "The Thief and the Boy" (XII), "The Drunken Husband" (XVI), "The Eagle and the Fox" (XXIV), and "The Lion, the Wolf, and the Dog" (XXX).  The couplets seem perfunctory to me.  Do not miss the good print of Bewick's homage to his predecessors as frontispiece in the booklet accompanying the prints.

1973 Aisopou Mythoi Tettares: Four Fables of Aesop. William Cheney? Hardbound. Los Angeles?: The Press in the Gatehouse. $20 from Oak Knoll Books, New Castle, DE, May, '05. 

Only four pages are used in this interlinear miniature 2" x 2¾". The interllinear translation is the literal kind very helpful to students. The four fables here treat of the fly who fell into a pot, FG, the old man and death, and DS. For a very deliberate little book, this pamphlet does not tell much about itself! I gather that this press operated in Los Angeles. The book may have been the work of William Cheney, who also worked with both Dawson's Book Shop and Worldhouse Publishers.

1973 Also Sprach der Marabu: Neue Fabeln. Kurt Kauter. Illustriert von Karl-Jürgen Härtel. Epilogue by Helmut Nitzschke. Erste Auflage. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag zu Rudolstadt. DM 4 from an unknown source, perhaps in August, '98.

There may have been an earlier printing of this book in 1965, though I find no trace of it at Choosebooks.com in Germany, which offers copies of a 1975 second, a 1981 third, and a 1984 fourth edition. Kurt Kauter was a communist writer with themes of peace and international friendship. This little (4½" x 7¼") book has 147 pages of text frequently illustrated, an epilogue, and a T of C. I read the first five fables and find them solidly in the tradition of Aesop, Phaedrus, La Fontaine, and Lessing. In the first fable, the Marabu finds all the animals right and wrong when each claims to be the greatest. "Each of you is greatest for himself. And it would be bad for the future of life if each of you did not wish to become more perfect" (7). A churchmouse pictures God as everything that the mouse is not: silky fur, pointy ears, green eyes, and an impressive moustache. The mouse meets a cat on the top altar step and wonders if she is God. The question gets an answer when the mouse is eaten (11). In "Selbstkritik" (13), the polar bear and the grizzly bear forgive each other and belittle each other's faults, only to attack the bamboo bear for eating some shoots! The fables tend to criticize standard human weaknesses and societal mores and to promote Kauter's themes of peace and international friendship. The caricature-like illustrations tend to simple geometric forms, especially rectangles.

1973 Babrius et ses poemes. Léon Herrmann. Brussels: Latomus, Volume 135. $15 at Strand, NY, May, '91.

A real find! Its pages were still uncut. Careful fundamental work on the text of all of Babrius. 200 fables are presented in alphabetical order with an apparatus criticus and French translation (132). An index of fables on 244 adds Perry numbers. T of C at the very back. There are chapters on doubtful fables, sources, and artistry, and a compact bibliography. Unfortunately, the fables are printed right up against each other. A valuable resource, especially together with Perry's Loeb text.

1973 Childcraft: The How and Why Library. Volume 2: Stories and Fables. Chicago: Field Enterprises Educational Corp. Gift of Wendy Wright, Dec., '94.

Compare the five fables (76-84) here with those in the parallel 1964 edition. They occupy exactly the same pages, but two of the five fables have changed. BW and AD have replaced TMCM and FS. The held-over fables use the same Jacobs translation used in the 1931/47, 1949, and 1964 Childcraft editions. The strange melange of illustrations continues. The illustrators are acknowledged on 302. The whole volume remains unchanged from 1964 except that three folktales are added and "Myths and Legends" substitutes for "Tall Tales."

1973 Crónica de Fabulandia: El Caballo y la Hormiga. Thijs Chanowski. Apparently an excerpt from a television series. #4 in a series. Bilbao: Editorial Fher. $.50 at Editorial A. Lisbona, Caracas, May, '91.

Apparently, the horse saves the grasshopper, who has been knocked out in a terrible storm. I do not think there is anything Aesopic here. An example of what the root fabu- has meant to people around the world.

1973 Der Löwe und die Maus und andere grosse und kleine Tiere in Fabeln, Geschichten und Bildern. Ausgewählt von Anne M. Rothenberg. Paperbound. Munich: Ein Ellermann Lese-Buch: Verlag Heinrich Ellermann. DM 18 from Antiquariat Hatry, Heidelberg, August, '01. 

Among the various German anthologies of fable that I have found, this book strikes me as unusual. First, it is a paperback, and a tall, slim one at that. Second, it mixes fables and "Geschichten" in a way that is uncommon. Third, it has some peculiarities of format. How often does a T of C need six pages (214-219)? The pages tend to have small margins, and though the text typeprint sizes vary, they tend to be large. As far as I can tell, the organization of the fables is associative. For example, a number of lion fables occur early. I count about 121 fables. Just before the T of C there is a Quellenverzeichnis that also serves as an AI of authors; I count about fifty-four of them. This section also includes a list of sources for the abundant--but cheaply rendered--illustrations. Most of these are from one of these three sources: Grandville's "Life of the Animals"; Bewick; and the Ulmer Aesop.

1973 Der Spatz in der Hand: Fabeln und Verse. Wolf Dietrich Schnurre. Mit 75 Zeichnungen des Autors. Zweite Auflage. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Munich/Vienna: Langen-Müller Verlag. See 1971/73.

1973 Die Fabeln des Leonardo da Vinci. Gesammelt und herausgegeben von Bruno Nardini. Ins Deutsche übertragen und mit einem Vorwort versehen von Rudolf Hagelstange. Illustrationen von Adriana Saviozzi Mazza. Erste Auflage. Printed in Italy. Würzburg: Arena-Verlag. DM 10 at Heinrich Heine Antiquariat, Düsseldorf, July, '95.

My first recollection of this book is that, at the end of a day, I paid for it with what I had left: 8 marks, 1 streetcar fare slip, and some pfennigs. The nice man gave me the pfennig pieces back! The book is a cousin of Fables of Leonardo Da Vinci (1973, see my comments there), both having come from Favole e Leggende (1972). Most is of course the same, like the endpapers (though in different colors) and the selection of fables. The cover illustrations are different: "A Mouse, A Weasel, and A Cat" on the American edition, but "Die Drosseln und die Eule" on the German. The American edition adds "The Bramble" illustration on its title-page. The German edition's colors are much better; in fact, the difference in quality is remarkable! The Nardini foreword drops out of the German edition, and there are no highlighted morals.

1973 Eastern Fables. With vignette illustrations. Miniature. No editor or illustrator acknowledged. Introduction is signed by "F.E.I." #24 of 250. $10 at Pepper and Stern in Boston, Dec., '89.

Six fables from the Panchatantra, each with an illustration. "The Gardener and the Bear" and "The Crane and the Craw-Fish" are familiar to me. Good examples of the Panchatantra's more rambling style.

1973 Ein Narr, Ein Weiser und viele Tiere: Alte Fabeln, neu erzählt. Frans Haacken. Mit Schabzeichnungen von Frans Haacken. Hardbound. Recklinghausen: Georg Bitter Verlag. €8 from Antiquariat an der Stiftskirche, Bad Waldsee, Sept., '13.

I enjoy this spirited book. Not quite as sardonic as Bierce, it is in the same direction. FC offers a good beginning taste of the good stuff that goes on here. The cheese hits the fox right in the nose, he breaks into tears, and he finally runs wailing from the scene. The crow cannot understand what has just happened, but he eats the cheese. As the illustration shows nicely at the end of LM, the lion fulfills the mouse's wish never to have to tremble again -- by eating him! In MSA, the ass sells himself and takes a trip with the profits! The foxes do cut off their tails, and then they mock the fox who found the first tail in a trap: "Tail is out of fashion, and he has two of them!" The vintner comes upon the complaining fox in FG, tries to hit him but instead hits the vine. Grapes fall, and the fox makes off with them. The cat does end up eating the bat and then says "Tastes just like mouse"! The sons of the dying father are still digging in the vineyard as the book closes. Good fun, including the spirited black-and-white illustrations. 

1973 Fabel. Erwin Leibfried. 2., verbesserte und erweiterte Auflage. Paperbound. Stuttgart: Sammlung Metzler Realien zur Literatur: J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandllung. DM 11 from Bücherwurm, Heidelberg, June, '98.

Here is a well-packed, small-print paperback of 114 pages with a wealth of basic material for understanding the genre fable. The book was first published in 1967, and this is a second, improved and extended, edition. As its opening T of C shows, it moves through ten chapters. A first chapter studies the word and concept "fable." There follows a review of attempts to define the essential character and the genesis of this genre. A third chapter distinguishes fable from related genres. Characteristic traits of the genre make up the fourth chapter. Chapter Five presents four formal variations: dramatising, "Episierung," versifying, and the linear character of prose fables. Chapter Six presents four stylistic traits of fable: belehrender, kritisierender, satirischer, and fabuloser. The structure of typical fables makes up the seventh chapter, including Alberus' unusual structure of situating each fable in a particular geographical region and even its typical scenery. Chapter Eight treats the history of fable, especially German fable, through its major periods. A ninth chapter deals with fable in the school curriculum. A final chapter gives an overview and some of the tasks of further research. Do not confuse this book with Leibfried's other book of the same title, published by Buchler in 1984. I had to check Wikipedia to make sure that a man wrote two books with the same name in different publishing houses! My question of this fine book is about its intended audience. Could this be a scholarly resource for teachers in the Gymnasium? Its bibliographical sections are very strong! A surprising thing about this book is that it contains almost no fable texts. That approach makes sense. Many such scholarly approaches include some or even many texts, selected to demonstrate or confirm the author's views. 

1973 Fabeln und Parabeln mit einem Begleitwort über Fabel, Parabel und allerhand…abel.  Maximilian Maria Ströter.  Paperbound.  Dusseldorf: Aloys Henn Verlag.  €8.91 from Buch-Mars-RolandSamsz, Hemer, Germany, Nov., '/20.

Maximilian Maria Ströter died in 1979, as the rare mention of him on the internet confirms.  Here is a 109-page paperback featuring some 69 fables as well as a "68a."  I tried the first several and found them understandable and pleasing.  They deal frequently with the subjectivity of perception, especially as it concerns artistic quality.  Dogs rate cooks on what kind of food they throw out the window.  An ornamental cherry tree answers critics who say that it does not bear fruit: "Lasst auch die Künstler leben, wenn ihr die Köche lobt" (5).  A piece of wood floats on the surface of the sea for a long time and proclaims that it knows the sea.  A fish surfaces to challenge: "How can you know the sea when you have been only on its surface?" (6).  Fable #7 tells CJ along with La Fontaine's human parallel.  "Jeder hat seinen Geschmack, seine Wertschätzung -- und wie leicht wird mancher zum Ignoranten!" (9).

1973 Fables. Herbert Kohl. Pamphlet. Printed in USA. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $20 from J.E. Miles, Bookseller, Brentwood, CA, through TomFolio, April, '02.

This is a sixty-page booklet, 5½" x 7½", containing twenty-five varied fables. The booklet is part of "Interaction: A Student-Centered Language Arts and Reading Program." The selection includes fables created by children, Aesop, Thurber, and several others. Many of the versions, including those done by the children, have a sardonic and parodic turn to them. The illustrations, whose creators are listed on 60, would have appealed, I think, to the young people for whom they were created in 1973. I am surprised that I have gone all these years without finding this booklet before!

1973 fables and folktales. William Kottmeyer, Audrey Claus, and Ruth Dockery. No illustrator acknowledged. +10 Vocabulary Booster, Level A. First printing in 1972? NY: Webster Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company. $4.95 at Black Star, June, '92.

A verbose approach to fables; almost all the stories are two pages long. I find all the italicized words bothersome; they are the vocables to be boosted. The fables at times seem stretched in the direction of the vocabulary to be covered. The stories are numbered in the T of C but not in the book. There is, strangely, almost no framework help here, like an introduction or commentary. Fables occur in #1-5, 9, 11, 15, 17, 20-39, and 61-72. From #73 on, the young reader is treated to Robin Hood. Differently told: A fly instead of a grasshopper argues with the ants (the traditional story returns on 42). "The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts" (73) has the animals coming in alphabetical order. The town mouse whispers to the farm mouse as soon as they enter his very modern house. SW (54-55) is mistold. The golden eggs (58-9) occasion disagreement between the man and his wife. The milkmaid (64-5) asks advice along the road. She later hits her toe on a stone. Long telling seems to help stories like "The Hares and the Frogs" (68) and "The Miser and His Gold" (70). Black-and-brown illustrations throughout. The printing and year information is on the binding edge of the last page of print.

1973 fables and folktales. William Kottmeyer, Audrey Claus, and Ruth Dockery. Hardbound. NY: Webster Division, McGraw-Hill Book Company. $2 in Milwaukee, August, '92.

I already have a copy of this book in the collection. I was ready to consign this copy to the "Collection of Extras" when I noticed the different cataloguing information on the verso of the title-page. This may actually be an earlier edition or printing than that, since it offers "Cataloguing in Publication." So I keep it in the collection. As I mention there, this is a verbose approach to fables; almost all the stories are two pages long. I find all the italicized words bothersome; they are the vocables to be boosted. The fables at times seem stretched in the direction of the vocabulary to be covered. The stories are numbered in the T of C but not in the book. There is, strangely, almost no framework help here, like an introduction or commentary. Fables occur in #1-5, 9, 11, 15, 17, 20-39, and 61-72. From #73 on, the young reader is treated to Robin Hood. Differently told: A fly instead of a grasshopper argues with the ants (the traditional story returns on 42). " The Lion, the Fox, and the Beasts " (73) has the animals coming in alphabetical order. The town mouse whispers to the farm mouse as soon as they enter his very modern house. SW (54-55) is mistold. The golden eggs (58-9) occasion disagreement between the man and his wife. The milkmaid (64-5) asks advice along the road. She later hits her toe on a stone. Long telling seems to help stories like " The Hares and the Frogs " (68) and " The Miser and His Gold " (70). Black-and-brown illustrations throughout. The printing and year information is on the binding edge of the last page of print. This copy has an injured back cover. 

1973 Fables Créoles transposées et illustrées.  Marie-Thérèse Julien Lung-Fou.  Paperbound.  L'Imprimerie Antillaise Saint-Paul.  $12.55 from Amazon, July, ‘21.

This is a delightful landscape pamphlet of 70 pages presenting 22 fables, each with a lively line-drawing.  The 22 include many of the standard favorites by La Fontaine, here rendered in a form of French that I cannot crack.  The illustrations, all signed "MTJLF," are themselves a delight.  GA on 11 is a good example.  Lung-Fou as artist loves jagged lines!  7¼" x about 5".

1973 Fables from La Fontaine, Including His Life of Aesop. Translated by Kitty Muggeridge. Illustrated by J.B. Oudry. Dust jacket. London: Collins. £4 at Quinto on Charing Cross Road, London, Aug., '88. Extra copy for $8.50 from Henry Pordes, London, July, '92.

A good selection of Oudry (twenty illustrations, one for each fable here), but the reproductions are not as sharp as I would have hoped. Kitty Muggeridge is Malcolm's wife; her vita is on the back flyleaf. The life of Aesop by La Fontaine may not appear very frequently. The versions are in brief, unrhymed verse. The extra copy adds a gold design of WC upside down on the back cover! Since they differ in that respect, I will keep both copies in the collection. See the 1973 reprint that gets the design correctly onto the front cover.

1973 Fables from La Fontaine, Including His Life of Aesop. Translated by Kitty Muggeridge. Illustrated by J.B. Oudry. Hardbound. London: Collins. £6 from Rose's, Hay-on-Wye, June, '98.

This 1973 reprint is identical with the 1973 first printing in all ways I can discern, except that it adds a gold design of WC to the cover. The first printing seems to have put this design upside-down on the back cover! If this book had a dust jacket, it has lost it. See my comments on the first printing.

1973 Fables: La Fontaine: Intégrale. Pierre Michel et Maurice Martin. Paperbound. Paris: Univers des Lettres Bordas 276-78: Bordas. $0.50 from Alexander Canfield, Marshfield, WI, through eBay, Oct., '10.

This book contains two volumes, one of which I had already found and listed under "1964/80." The two volumes cover the first and last six books of La Fontaine's fables, respectively. The cover layout is the same: six colored illustrations of La Fontaine's fables. This is a typical French paperback on a French classic: there are plenty of illustrations, questions, notes, and pencilled readers' jottings. One of my questions is: "How does this volume contain three ULB numbers rather than two?" 

1973 Fables of Leonardo Da Vinci. Interpreted and transcribed by Bruno Nardini. Introduction by Margaret Meek. Illustrated by Adriana Saviozzi Mazza. Inscribed by noted storyteller Brother Blue. Northbrook, IL: Hubbard Press. $10 from Eva Arond, Lexington, April, '89. Extra copy for $8 at Gerrie's Collectables, Etc., San Juan Bautista, Feb., '97.

A lovely book, especially for the beautiful colored art on its big pages. The fables range in type and quality. Some deal more than the Aesopic tradition with the elements: fire, water, stone, and steel. Some are good Aesopic stuff: "The Mouse, the Weasel, and the Cat;" "The Tree and the Pole;" "The Ermine;" "The Walnut and the Bell Tower;" and "The Falcon and the Duck." The morals are surprisingly traditional, allegorical, and moralistic. Two of the best are statements of faith: "The Pelican" and "The Eagle Burning Off His Feathers." The best illustration among many good ones is of the butterfly and the flame. The first page of the extra copy is creased.

1973 Fables, Tales, and Stories/A Captive in the Caucasus. L.N. Tolstoi. Compiled and Adapted with Notes and Vocabulary by E. Vladimirsky and V. Zaitsev. Third edition. Paperbound. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House. See 1960/73.

1973 Fábulas de los mejores autores.  Selección y notas de Anteo Vidalta.  Illustrated by Mario Osvaldo Tassone.  Paperbound.  Buenos Aires: Éditiorial Andina.  $32 from Christian Tottino, Buenos Aires, through eBay, May, '16.

While the title page adds "de los mejores autores," the page before adds " Una rigurosa colección de las mas famosas fábulas" as a subtitle.  The most surprising thing about this paperback book is the selection of fabulists and fables.  Of the seven authors represented, Aesop hs sixteen fables, Lope to Vega two, Calderon two, Moreto one, Samaniego about 160, Iriarte twelve, Martinez one, and La Fontaine twenty-nine.  This is rather a book of Samaniego with a few others thrown in!  The Lope de Vega comment about the difference between writing and whistling is intriguing (17), especially because it is titled "Censurar es facil."  I will try to hunt that down.  Samaniego is divided into his nine books, as the closing T of C points out.  The "designs" are just that, usually a presentation of a single animal not tied to a fable scene.

1973 Fairy Tales and Fables. Edited by Eve Morel. Pictures by Gyo Fujikawa. NY: Grosset & Dunlap. See 1970/73.

1973 Fantastic Fables: Values for Tomorrow. By Judie Berke. Paperbound. Printed in USA. The Manhattan Rainbow and Lollipop Co. and Warren Schloat Productions, Inc. $4.97 from Bonnie Mihalic, Oxnard, CA, through EBay, Sept., '03.

Four thirty-two-page stories make up this comic-book. Content and approach are both typical of the nineteen-seventies. I read the first two stories. "The Unicorn and the Toad" has four old friends mourning that they are each the last in the species. The unicorn and the toad visit civilization to see what it is like. They come back with the unicorn preaching to his three friends that they need to love and appreciate each other. "The Blue Ant and the Orange Ant" puts the two opposed soldiers into a cave, where they learn to relate to each other and to hate the war.

1973 Favorite Fairy Tales Told in India.  Virginia Haviland.  Illustrated by Blair Lent.  Second printing.  Hardbound.  Dust jacket.  Boston:  Little, Brown and Company.  $4 from Readers' Books, Sonoma, CA, July, '15.

Twenty years ago I found the 1994 paperback of the same title and author and wrote "According to a note at the end of the book, the series in which this paperback is featured is a resurrection of a series done (starting in the 1950's?) by Little, Brown as the "Favorite Fairy Tales" series in hardback."  Well, here is a copy of that book in hardbound form, a second printing of the 1973 original with a dust jacket.  The artist here in the original version is Blair Lent, and students may want to compare someday the original version against the later artistry in the 1994 paperback.  In fact, the style of the duochrome illustrations here is thoroughly different from the black-and-white illustrations there.  As I wrote then, the eight stories are funny and well told.  "The Valiant Chattee-maker" (7) is an enjoyable story about the little guy winning.  "The Cat and the Parrot" (29) is a fantastic tale of a cat who eats whole armies--but stupidly eats crabs, who cut a hole in his side through which everyone escapes.  "The Blind Man, the Deaf Man, and the Donkey" (35) is a long series of enjoyable, mostly fantastic, incidents in which the blind and deaf men somehow fit together or complement each other.  I think three stories rate as fables.  "The Little Jackals and the Lion" (23) substitutes the last two jackals in a jungle for the hare who usually brings the lion to face his reflection in a well.  "The Alligator and the Jackal" (53) is a standard Indian tale; here the latter outwits the former five times.  "The Tiger, the Brahman, and the Jackal" (81) is a standard tale; here the tiger inserts himself into the inquiry--and into the cage!

1973 Forest Fables. Norm Lynch. Paperbound. Cincinnati, OH: The Standard Publishing Company. $8.99 from Calvin Caltvedt, West Hollywood, CA, through eBay, July, '10.

This is a sixteen-page landscape pamphlet with Christian Comics stories. Each page offers a three-panel lesson, sometimes concluding with a scriptural moral. I am happy to see that these stories from the 1970's have a strong ecological consciousness. Closest to traditional fables is the story of the lion who has stolen some honey and is then pursued by bees. This is one of those ephemeral fable materials that this collection can find and others may not. 

1973 Frog Fables & Beaver Tales. Text by Stanley Burke. Drawings by Roy Peterson. Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel. $4.50 Canadian at cafe Boooks inc., Montreal, Oct., '95.

Another big surprise. I picked this book up figuring that, though I had it already, I had not seen many other copies of it. The book is in fact identical with that which I had found five years ago, but the publisher has changed, even though the publisher still has the same address! The ISBN number is also now printed on the page facing the title page. See my comments in the adjoining entry.

1973 Frog Fables & Beaver Tales. Text by Stanley Burke. Drawings by Roy Peterson. Toronto: James Lorimer and Co. $3 at Second Chance in Omaha, May, '90.

A short beast epic satirizing Canadian politics in the 1970's. The satire seems effective, and the drawings helpful for identifying the characters (like Nixon, the chief eagle).

1973 Hesitant Wolf and Scrupulous Fox: Fables Selected from World Literature. Edited and with an introduction by Karen Kennerly. Hardbound. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Random House. $11.95 at Books and More Books, Santa Fe, May, '93. Extra copy for $5 at Book World in San Jose, Aug., '89.

Identical with the 1983 paperback I had earlier, though from a different publisher. A wonderful collection including some surprises like John Lennon. The dozen or so categories into which the fables are gathered may be somewhat maverick. Many of the texts here are new to me, like Wyatt's different version of TMCM (96-9). One category is for comparative renditions, apparently of the same fable. Aesop shows up in most categories, and his followers in almost all. Twelve good reproductions (listed on xxiii), but I cannot see any I would use in a lecture. There is a great frontispiece (after Hollar) of the belly that has cut off the head.

1973 I.A. Krylov: Basni. Illustrated by A. Laptyev. Preface by N. Tikonov. Canvas-bound. School Library. Moscow: Children's Literature. $6 from Szwede Slavic Books, Palo Alto, CA, March, '96.

Here are forty-six of Krylov's fables in a canvas-bound book of 112 pages for children. Laptyev's twenty-four full-page black-and-white illustrations are classics not only in the sense that they are excellent representations of the texts but also because they appear in other editions of Krylov. The illustrations are all dated in "46," "47," or "48." Enjoy, e.g., the cornering of the wolf in the kennel on 31, the breakdown of the immoderate horse on 47, the ass giving the nightingale a musical critique on 57, the visitor to the museum overlooking the elephant on 79, or the guest running away from more soup on 85. The cover itself has a nice pair of illustrations: the crow sits with the cheese atop the first letter of "Basni," and the fox runs off the cover with the cheese at the bottom right.

1973 Illustrated Poems for children. A Special Collection. Illustrated by Krystyna Orska. With an introduction by Miriam Peterson. Northbrook, IL: Hubbard Press. $8.75 from Dinkytown Antiquarian, July, '94.

A beautiful large book in excellent condition containing a wealth of poetry. Among its many poems is Emerson's "The Mountain and the Squirrel" (21).

1973 John Steinbeck as Fabulist.  Lawrence William Jones; Edited by Marston LaFrance. Paperbound.  Muncie, IN: Steinbeck Monograph Series, No. 3:  English Department, Ball State University.  Gift of Reinert Alumni Memorial Library, June, '13.

This is a 35-page pamphlet.  In an argument sensitive to the many meanings and types of "fable," Jones sees Steinbeck in his prewar years experimenting with the form of the novel but in his postwar works experimenting with the form of the parable.  Critics have hurt themselves by looking at the later works in the same way as they viewed the former.  Though Jones's analysis will go further, I can at least indicate that he sees Steinbeck as creating a fabulist's world in the later period of his writings.  Parable for Jones is, quoting Steinbeck, a "little play in your head."  Parable like those Steinbeck writes is a complex moral fable.  The article goes on to further distinguish.  Jones is careful to distinguish fable as he describes it here from traditional "animal fable."  But my sense is that he wants to keep the moral focus of fable and the organization that it gives a work.

1973 La Cigale et la Fourmi. Story edition. Presented by Annick le Marchand. Illustrated by Kalman Banitz. Toronto/Vancouver: Clarke, Irwin & Company. $1.49 Canadian at Bibliomanie, Toronto, Oct., '95.

Perhaps one of the simplest books I have. This "story edition" matches apparently an edition which involves only pictures. The illustrations are strong and colorful. The grasshopper goes to the lizard and is greeted. The grasshopper goes next to the ant and is told "good-bye." In this very brief presentation, there is time for only one more comment from each of the two characters: "Open up; I'm cold!" and "You sang all summer, while I worked. Now dance!" There is a text of a more extended version--to be acted perhaps or sung?--on the last regular page.

1973 La Fontaine and His Friends: A Biography. Agnes Ethel Mackay. Hardbound. NY: George Braziller. $10 from an unknown source, April, '89.

This is indeed a biography -- not comprehensive, to be sure, but accurate and lively. La Fontaine comes alive in these pages. I am happy to learn here of what it was that got Fouquet into trouble and what came of his arrest. I have learned of the meeting of the famous foursome about 1659: Moliere, Racine, Boileau, and La Fontaine. Moliere was the natural leader of this group that met for meals several times a week. "Their intention was to introduce into their works le beau, le naturel et le vrai while maintaining their respect for the ancients" (80). Moliere was the natural leader of the group. Moliere and Racine experienced a rupture in their relationship about 1665. There is an account here of a famous -- but perhaps only fictional -- picnic among the four at Versailles, reported in La Fontaine's "Psyche." There is more here than I had known of Madame de La Sabliere and her circle. She played an important role in La Fontaine's life, and he missed her when she gave herself to religion and the service of the sick. His admission into the Academy in 1684 was stormy, and Mackay makes sense of the troubles here. Those who want more specifically on the fables will find it gathered here in the book's last chapter, Chapter XIII. At the finish of each chapter there is a translation of the French passages quoted in the chapter. Along the way there are a number of photographs of historically relevant personages and places. This is a helpful book! 

1973 La Fontaine: Fables. Images de Romain Simon. Idéal Bibliothéque. Printed in Belgium. Paris: Hachette. See 1958/73.

1973 la liebre y la tortuga. Fábula de Esopo. adaptación de M. Eulàlia Valeri de la versión recogida por Joan Amades. versión castellana de Asunción Lissón. ilustraciones de Maria Rius. Barcelona: laGalera. $2 from Aims International Books at Chicago MLA Convention, Dec., '95.

This version places the story outside Barcelona. The best of the illustrations is of the bunny sleeping against a tree. This rabbit napped until the turtle caught up. Then the rabbit took off to Vic and there had dinner and spent the night with some relatives! The turtle has bright circles on his back, and the title page suggests that this is a ten-kilometer journey.

1973 Liberale: Ritrovata nell'Esopo Veronese del 1479. Testo di Giovanni Mardersteig. Con una nota introduttiva di Licisco Magagnato. Paperbound. Printed in Verona. Verona: Museo di Castelvecchio di Verona. £ 6 from Bloomsbury, London, August, ‘01.

I got very lucky as I ducked into an unlikely shop featuring mostly new books and publishers' remainders. A bookcase of older and used books included two treasures. (The other is a limited edition translated by Ian Warren and illustrated by Hellmuth Weissenborn from 1982). On the cover is a beautifully colored presentation of WC from the 1479 Verona Aesop published by Giovanni Alvise that uses the text of Accio Zucco. I believe that Mardersteig's discovery, celebrated in the festivities of December 22, 1973 that occasioned this booklet, is that a person named Liberale of Verona was the artist for the illustrations in this edition. The booklet has some 32 pages of text on Liberale and this edition. It also has twenty-six illustrations of various sizes. One of the best (#6) is again from the 1479 Verona Aesop. Like the cover's illustration, this depiction of "Il cappone e lo sparviero" is a water-colored woodcut from the British Museum copy of this lovely work. At least that is what I take a "xilografia acquerellata" to be! Other illustrations show other works of Liberale, 1479 Verona woodcuts without coloring, and woodcuts of subsequent editions derivative from these. See the description I give of my copy of the 1973 Officina Bodoni republication of the 1479 Verona Aesop discussed here. That Officina Bodoni work is referred to regularly in this booklet.

1973 Los Dos Ratoncitos. Volume 1: Los dos Ratoncitos; El Burrito Descontento. No translator given. Some drawings are signed "Gutmaga." Colleción Candor. Bilbao: Editorial Vasco Americana. $.50 at flea market in Salamanca, Summer, '86.

A falling-apart kids' version. Not particularly good drawings.

1973 Los mas importantes Cuentos. Enciclopedia Disney. San Sebastián: Buru Lan, S.A. de Ediciones. $5 at flea market in Madrid, Summer, '86.

My beloved one-a-day story book from language school, haggled for in the Madrid flea market. Contains LM, CP, "The Bull and the Flea," "The Farmer and His Sons," WC, and "El Zapatero y el Banquero"--all with (predictable) Disney illustrations.

1973 Marie de France: Äsop.  Eingeleitet, kommentiert, und übsersetzt von Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.  Paperbound.  Munich: Klassische Texte des Romanischen Mittelalters in zweisprachigen Ausgaben, Band 12: Wilhelm Fink Verlag.  €25.60 from Antiquariat Thomas Haker, Berlin, through ZVAB/ABE, Nov., '18.

Here is a lovely, careful German presentation of Marie de France, complete with German translations of her fables.  An introduction of some 40 pages precedes the fables, which are followed by several good appendices and indices.  One appendix presents FC in nine versions, culminating in Thurber's.  One index presents all the animals in Marie's "Äsop."  This is a fine, compact paperback book.

1973 May I Come In? By Theodore Clymer and Doris Gates. Various illustrators. Level 5. Series 360. Lexington, MA: Ginn and Company. See 1969/73.

1973 One Trick Too Many: Fox Stories from Russia. Translated by Mirra Ginsburg. Pictures by Helen Siegl. First printing. Library binding. NY: The Dial Press. With an identical extra copy. $.25 apiece from the Milwaukee Public Library Bookseller, Jan., '98.

See my comments on the lovelier copy I have of the second printing under 1973/74. This edition has a lime-background pictured hardcover and no dust jacket.

1973 Penthouse Magazine, Vol. 4, Number 7, March, 1973. Includes "Fatuous Fables" by Thomas Berger. Illustrations by Pauline Ellison. Paperbound. NY: Penthouse International Ltd.. $8.50 from Antic Hay Books through ILAB, Nov., '09.

Fable-collecting takes me places I may not have expected to go! Antic Hay listed not Penthouse but "Fatuous Fables," and I followed my rule of taking what I do not yet have. The stories are on 74 and 124-5. Berger's good sub-title is "After George Ade." That description gets it right. Ade is here, right down to the capitalization of "in" words. There are four stories here, each with a colored illustration covering one column in Penthouse's three-column format. "Fable of the Charming Changeling" uses trendy language to describe a man who underwent a sex-change and became popular as a woman in several ways in several phases. Her tombstone displayed both her male and female names. "This was the last of her many Firsts" (74). "Fable of the Felonious Fatty" tells of an immensely overweight woman who partners with a little man to rob banks. "Fable of the Dime-Dropping Deviate" tells of a man who does all the right things but has to make a few obscene phone calls every week. He does just fine until he happens to call a woman who outdoes him with her Obscene Invitation. "Fable of the Disloyal Dachshund" tells of Poochy's rise to stardom and power -- and his owner's chagrin. True to Ade's work, Berger's stories are witty from start to finish. This magazine and even this piece is "so 70's"!

1973 Ride the East Wind: Parables of Yesterday and Today. Edmund C. Berkeley. Illustrations of Billinghurst and others. Dust jacket. NY: Quadrangle, the New York Times Book Company. $6, Feb., '90. Second copy signed by the author for $5.95 at Brattle Book Shop, Dec., '89.

Weird re-workings of Aesop in a book heavy with the editor's own work. The book has a curious structure: it picks out key statements to repeat and adds quotable morals. The titles sometimes suggest applications. Pages 159-61 are a typical use and perversion of Aesop: the wolf turns nice when he has a family to care for. There is less Aesop than one might hope for in a book like this. Reading it becomes tedious. A resource for "development" beyond Aesop.

1973 Short Plays based on Aesop's Fables. Albert Cullum. Selected from Albert Cullum's Aesop in the Afternoon. Unacknowledged illustrations from various traditional artists, chiefly Bewick. First printing.   Softbound.  (c)1973, 1972 by Scholastic Magazines. NY: Scholastic Book Services. $2.25 at the Book House on Grand, St. Paul, July, '94.

This booklet contains twenty-five of Cullum's elementary-school dramas. See 1972 for comments on the original book.

1973 The Fables of Aesop Printed from the Veronese edition of 1479 in Latin verses and the Italian version by Accio Zucco, with the woodcuts newly engraved and coloured after a copy in the British Museum. With woodcuts by Anna Bramanti after Liberale da Verona. #78 of 160. Hardbound. Printed in Verona. Verona: Editiones Officinae Bodoni. $1,500 from Louella Kerr and Lorraine Reed Old Fine & Rare Books, Paddington, Australia, June, '99.

Read my commentary on the prospectus for this two-volume work under the same title and year, and you will read "I doubt that I will ever have anything else from the Officina Bodoni in this collection!" Hallelujah! I have the work itself! I will repeat here some of the details of the work described there. Texts include Latin (of unknown provenance); Zucco's Italian always in two sonnets, one on the events and the other on the moral of the individual fable; and, in the second volume, Caxton's English. The illustrations (all in the first volume) were recut on wood by Anna Bramanti following an exemplar in the British Museum and then colored by hand at the Atelier Daniel Jacomet in Paris. The brochure rightly speaks in praise of the illustrations' wide range of colors and subtle shading. My favorites among the illustrations include DS (33), "The Eagle and the Tortoise" (62), "The Fly and the Bald Man" (125), FS (128), OF (152), and "The Ephesian Matron" (180). An inserted card gives a list of the page numbers of each of the sixty-six fable illustrations. The book is printed on handmade Magnani paper. After a Latin T of C, Giovanni Mardersteig argues in an English epilogue that the illustrator was Liberale da Verona. He offers excellent comments on the relationship of the Veronese edition of 1479 to the Naples edition of Francesco del Tuppo in 1485. See my favorite collector for a write up of this edition under F-0512 I-II. He calls it "one of the masterpieces of post-war printing." Louella Kerr and I discussed the purchase of this book over the space of a year. This volume is the most expensive book in this collection.

1973 The Fables of Aesop: The American Prospectus. Printed from the Veronese edition of 1479 in Latin verses and the Italian version by Accio Zucco, with the woodcuts newly engraved and coloured after a copy in the British Museum. Verona: Editiones Officinae Bodoni. $50 by mail from Old Friends, Portland, April, '96.

I doubt that I will ever have anything else from the Officina Bodoni in this collection! This eight-page brochure presents the edition by detailing who has worked on the texts and the illustrations. Texts include Latin (of unknown provenance); Zucco's Italian always in two sonnets, one on the events and the other on the moral of the individual fable; and Caxton's English. The illustrations were recut on wood by Anna Bramanti and then colored by hand at the Atelier Daniel Jacomet in Paris. The sample given here, WC, is simply exquisite. The brochure speaks in praise of the illustrations' wide range of colors and subtle shading. As far as I can recall, I had been offered this brochure only once before in all my years of prowling. The sole North American distributor of the book is given as Chiswick Book Shop in Sandy Hook, CT. A call to Sandy Hook information seems to indicate that Chiswick is no longer in business. I wondered what the price on the full book would be....

1973 The Fabulous Fable Factory. A Musical Play in One Act. Book by Joseph Robinette. Music by Thomas Tierney. Lyrics by Joseph Robinette and Thomas Tierney. Woodstock, IL: The Dramatic Publishing Company. Gift of Gerald Walling, S.J., Sept., '90. Extra copy with ISBN number for $4.95 at Act I Bookstore, Chicago, Sept., '93.

A lively show I saw performed at Marquette in January, 1990. Seven fables, modified from Jacobs (NA). The contemporary little boy Monroe serves temporarily as moral maker: the moral thus becomes the entree to understanding the fables. The morals are loose and creative. Some of the language is dated (60's?). GA is new to me in this form; its moral is "Seize the moment." The moral for TMCM is "The one thing better than leaving home is coming back." Seven songs.

1973 The Father, his Son and their Donkey/Hermes and the Wood-cutter/The Rich Man and his Servant. Oxford Graded Readers. Retold by L.A. Hill. Illustrated by Paul Wright. London: Oxford University Press. See 1971/73.

1973 The First Three Books of Caxton's Aesop Containing the Fables Illustrated in the Verona Aesopus of MCCCCLXXIX. William Caxton and Betty Radice. #78 of 160. Hardbound. Printed in Verona. Verona: Editiones Officinae Bodoni. $810 from Louella Kerr and Lorraine Reed Old Fine & Rare Books, Paddington, Australia, June, '99.

I have to admit that this volume is come-down after the spectacular first volume of the set, The Fables of Aesop Printed from the Veronese edition of 1479 (1973). Here there is no illustration at all. The typeface used for the Caxton fables is lovely, and the spelling has been transformed into that of present-day English. Synonyms are used for words that have fallen into desuetude. As in Caxton, a T of C for each of the three books is given at its beginning. Seven fables not in Caxton but included in the Veronese version (#I and #LXI-LXVI) have been translated for this publication by Betty Radice. They are found in Part II beginning on 107. The binding of both volumes, with morocco spine and parchment-covered boards, has a simple geometric design in gold.

1973 The Four Kings of the Forest: A Fable.  Written and illustrated by Joyce Lancaster Wilson.  Signed by Wilson, #244 of 275.  Paperbound.  San Francisco:  The Press in Tuscany Alley.  $100 from Powell's, Portland, July, 15.

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.

1973 The Lazies: Tales of the Peoples of Russia. Translated and Edited by Mirra Ginsburg. Illustrated by Marian Parry. First printing. Dust jacket. NY: Macmillan Publishing Co. $5.00 at Second Chance, Omaha, April, '93.

Here is a surprising concept: these fifteen Russian stories all deal with someone who is lazy! The Aesopic tale in here is "Ea and Eo" (56). Ea, the dawdler of two donkeys, leaps into a stream and finds her salt load lightened. Later she jumps in with a load of blankets and has to carry her wet, heavy, colorless load home. A very attractive little book.

1973 The Lion's Share in Art and Legend. Vivian B. Kline. First edition; signed by Vivian Kline. Dust jacket. Hardbound. NY: Vantage Press. $20 from John Michael Lang Fine Books, Seattle, March, '07.

Here is a 155-page book meant for the curious general reader. The author found herself asking why lions are represented so often and why they represent so many different things. She found, among other things, that "the phrase describing the lion as 'King of Beasts' is so old that we do not know who first used it" (viii). Copious photographs of art objects punctuate the presentation of lion as enemy, leader, guard, celestial body, and emblem. A chapter is given to fable, but the first fable is mentioned before then: the fable of the lion and the rooster (47-48). The lion who has allowed the cock to frighten him consoles himself when he learns that the elephant is tormented by a mosquito. The chapter itself, "The Lion in Fable" (50-58), takes note of the origin of this book's title in the fable of the lion who claims all four parts for himself (50). Kline quotes at length a strong passage from Sir Thomas Elyot in 1531 recommending fables (in Greek!) as important in grammar school. Erasmus is also cited, as is William Ellery Leonard (1912): "Mankind will still remember Aesop/Though mountains melt and oceans freeze up." After 53, the chapter turns rather to ancient lion lore. Here Kline quotes--often at some length--Aristotle, Pliny, "The Physiologus," and Leonardo. Fables return in "The Lion As Good Guy" (82-87). This chapter mentions LM, AL, "St. Jerome and the Lion," and an "Indian fable" that sounds very much like a Jataka tale. In this tale, a lion has agreed to watch the monkey's two little ones. When the lion falls asleep, a vulture seizes the two young monkeys. After various negotiations fail, the lion tears out a piece of its own flesh to offer it to the vultures as ransom for the monkeys. "Becoming a Lion" includes mention of DLS (90).

1973 The Strange Feathery Beast and Other French Fables. Lee Cooper. Illustrated by Charles Keeping. Paperbound. London: Carousel Books: Transworld Publishers. $10.63 from The Trend, Norwich, UK, through abe, April, '04.

There are five folktales here, heavy on trickery. The title-story is about outwitting the devil. The simple farmer Vidalou finally outwits him by producing an animal that the devil cannot identify. This animal is Vidalou's pudgy wife, covered with feathers and with a funnel for a nose. There are good images of this animal on the cover, on 20, and on 22. I enjoyed the tricks in "The Wolf in the Ram's Skin" (52-65). The village idiot Pierre outwits the three brothers that bully him, for example by following his mother's advice literally: "Take the wolf by the tail." Later on, he outwits the three again by getting them to be sewn into bags and to be thrown into the river.

1973 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: An Aesop Fable. Illustrated by Anne Sellers Leaf. Chicago: Rand McNally. $1.95. Extra copy of earlier $1 version for $2.

Large and inexpensive kids' book in big format with simple and sentimental pictures. I do not see much here to use.

1973 The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse: An Aesop Fable. NA. Illustrated by Anne Sellers Leaf. Hardbound. Chicago: Start-Right Elf Book: Rand McNally. $3 from Hawthorne Blvd. Books, Portland, OR, July, '00.

I thought I had this book, and was wrong again! In fact, it is a copy of the much larger book of the same year from the same company. Where that book was 8" x 10¼", this little book is 4¾" x 6½". This book needs thinner margins than that book to manage proportional pages. Where those two volumes cost $1 and $1.59, respectively, this book cost $.59. As I mentioned there, it is an inexpensive kids' book with simple and sentimental pictures.

1973 Treasury of Aesop's Fables. With 68 Illustrations by Thomas Bewick. Together with the "Life of Aesop" by Oliver Goldsmith. NY: Avenel Books: Crown Publishing Co. Two copies for $4 and $1.50, with different covers and different paper quality. Two extra copies.

No index or T of C. Very small engravings, probably too small to be of use. The text may be from the eighteenth or nineteenth century, but I cannot find any attribution. A reprint of some of Bewick's art from Select Fables (1784). This book is a direct knock-off of the 1932 edition published by Ellis, with one line changed on the title page and apparently nothing else. The engravings are rendered more poorly and end up inky.

1973 Unter uns Tieren: abgelauscht in 153 Zeichnungen.  Jean Effel.  First edition.  Hardbound.  Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag.  €6 from Hassbecker, Heidelberg, July, '19. 

I have been a fan of Jean Effel for a long time.  His real name is Francois Lejeune; his pseudonym comes from using "Jean" with his initials.  Born and died in Paris, 1908-1982.  Described as a caricaturist, illustrator, journalist, and political commentator.  He had close relationships with both Russia and Czechoslovakia.  Perhaps that is part of what I perceive to be the popularity of his La Fontaine illustrations in the Communist bloc.  This book does one little thing for the collection.  By the use of its very first illustration, it clarifies a postcard by giving it a text.  The illustration is here on the first page of illustrations in an unpaginated book.  La Fontaine is walking energetically into the woods when a crow cries out "Watch out!  Here comes a spy!"  That text makes more sense of a Russian postcard in the collection without text, at least on the picture side of the postcard.  While I delight in the rest of the one-to-a-page cartoons in this lovely little book, I have not found anything else in it directly related to fables.  I am frankly happy to be able to include it in the collection.

1973 Words From The Wise. Centuries of Proverbs to Live By Selected by Arthur Wortman. Illustrated With Woodcuts by Fritz Kredel. Dust jacket. Kansas City: Hallmark Crown Editions. $7.50 at Aardvark in San Diego, Aug., '93.

A beautiful book. I particularly like Kredel's colored illustrations, which are well printed here. FG is on both the back of the dust jacket and 17, with a good colored illustration in each case. These proverbs made me stop and think.

1973 1,000 Quaint Cuts. Reprint edition. Andrew White Tuer. Dust jacket. Original: London: Field & Tuer, The Leadenhall Press, etc. Reprint: NY: Art Direction Book Company. See 1886/1973.

1973 75 Fabeln für Zeit-genossen. Den unverbesserlichen Sündern gewidmet. James Thurber. Dust-jacket. Hardbound. Printed in Germany. Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag.  See 1967/73.

1973/74 Monkey in a Lion's Skin. Story by Paul White. Illustrations by Peter Oram. Second impression. Hardbound. A Jungle Doctor Picture Fable: Moody Press. $3.98 from Better World Books, June, '11.

Copyright 1973 by The Paternoster Press Ltd. The story is taken from White's Jungle Doctor's Monkey Tales. In this adaptation of DLS, Toto, the monkey in the lion's skin, proclaims to his acquaintances that he is not a monkey any more and has become a lion. Having tried to dissuade him, Boohoo the Hippo wisely opines "Perhaps the best way to teach a monkey something is to let him find out for himself." Good thinking, Boohoo! The leopard approaches, and Toto declares that he is not afraid, even if the hippo and giraffe are afraid. Soon, Toto becomes afraid and has to cry for help and to run. Twiga the Giraffe ends up saving Toto from the end of the limb on which he had isolated himself while the leopard waited on the same limb nearer the tree's trunk. The final page offers a Christian proclamation. "In order to become a real Christian, a boy or girl has to be born all over again and become a new creature. Acting like a Christian won't do it." The early pictures of the monkey in the lion's skin are clever. The book's most dramatic picture has the leopard springing after the desperate Toto as he runs away. I noticed that there are other books in the series that look like similar imitations of Aesop. I have already ordered one and what looks like a collection of them. We will see!

1973/74 One Trick Too Many: Fox Stories from Russia. Translated by Mirra Ginsburg. Pictures by Helen Siegl. Second Printing. Dust jacket. NY: The Dial Press. $17.50 through Advanced Book Exchange from J. Whirler, Portland, OR, Sept., '97.

The multi-colored woocuts are bright and lovely! The seven stories include some fables and fable material. In "The Fox and the Lion," when the fox and the lion march into the forest together, the animals flee—and so prove fox's point to the lion that the animals fear the fox. "The Old Man, the Wolf, and the Vixen" is a form of the tiger and brahmin story. "Animal Friendship" is the fable in which the fox learns to divide from his just-now-deceased partner. "The Vixen and Her Cub" is a fable I had not heard: if the mother can warm her paws at a huge distance, her cub can have his eye burned with a spark from the same fire. The dust jacket is slightly torn. Do not miss the lovely stamp or imprint of the cover.

1973/76 Childcraft: The How and Why Library, Volume 2. Joseph Jacobs et al. Hardbound. Chicago: Field Enterprieses Educational Corp. $5 from an unknown source, July, '98.

This is the--apparently unchanged--1976 printing of the 1973 version. Let me repeat my comments from there. Compare the five fables (76-84) here with those in the parallel 1964 edition. They occupy exactly the same pages, but two of the five fables have changed. BW and AD have replaced TMCM and FS. The held-over fables use the same Jacobs translation used in the 1931/47, 1949, and 1964 Childcraft editions. The strange melange of illustrations continues. The illustrators are acknowledged on 302. The whole volume remains unchanged from 1964 except that three folktales are added and "Myths and Legends" substitutes for "Tall Tales."

1973/76 Dancing on the Grave of a Son of a Bitch. Diane Wakoski. Fifth printing. Paperbound. Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow Press. $10 from Curio Corner Books, Austin, TX, through abe, Nov., '02. 

After 125 pages of poems, there are five "Esoteric Fables." "Esoteric" is well chosen. These texts seem to me to be a long way from Aesop. They have a surrealistic quality. The first runs onto a third page. A buffalo wants to eat mushrooms because he has read about them in the Encyclopedia Britannica. An undetermined object has never learned its identity but is ready to be eaten up by the buffalo when it identifies itself as a puffball mushroom. Instead, the buffalo breaks its teeth on this hard object. The object finally takes to calling itself a "rolling stone" because of a comment by or about a music group driving by, but is not happy with that name because there is no "rolling stone" entry in the encyclopedia. More Aesopic, I think, is "The Owl and the Snake." The two fall in love with each other, and each wishes and tries in vain to be more like the other. The moral suggests that when you want something extravagant and out of reach, you will become strange, you will be rejected, you will never have what you want, and you will be unhappy. The third is a complex tale that tries to turn the tables on human and animal in a fable. The fourth fable is about a "handsome and narcissistic frog with a wart on his nose" (133). A nice touch here occurs when Wakoski invites the reader to decide the outcome. The last is "The Fable of the Fragile Butterfly." The latter is in fact the postman who is a butterfly in his rich, extensive fantasy life. He turns out to be a magician under the spell of another magician, his sister, who is a monarch butterfly. Wakoski then lists seven endings, the last of which is "Who are you?" Fable, as Wakoski practices it, takes on whole new functions.

1973/83 Hesitant Wolf and Scrupulous Fox: Fables Selected from World Literature. Edited and with an introduction by Karen Kennerly. Paperbound. NY: Schocken Books. $9.95.

Identical with the 1973 hardbound from Random House. A wonderful collection, gathered into some dozen categories or so. One category is for comparative renditions, apparently of the same fable. Aesop shows up in most categories, and his followers in almost all. Good job on the dozen reproductions (listed on xxiii), but I cannot see any I am after. There is a great picture of the belly facing the title-page.

1973/85 Die Schöne von Hinten: Lieder und Fabeln von Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Ausgewählt von Ingrid Sommer. 12 Lithographien nach Kupferstichen von Daniel Chodowiecki. Hardbound. 4. Auflage, boxed. Berlin: Buchverlag Der Morgen. DM 10 from Buchhandlung Revers, Berlin, Oct., '98.

This lovely little volume of 104 pages, about 4" x 5¾", comes in a marbled box and with marbled covers. The title-fable is only sixteen lines long but very telling. An enchanting woman seen from behind promises to be something very special. The speaker and his friend catch up to her; she turns around. "What was it that enchanted me? An old woman in a young dress." Does this fable play on names in which the "von" gives a hint of nobility? If so, she is the beauty from Behind. The first item here, "Der Kuss," is well done. Other kisses hardly deserve the name, when compared with the kiss which my Lesbia gives me. I read "Das Geheimnis" on this occasion. A priest drags a secret out of a young man, only to find out that the secret was about a very small thing. Lessing's good rationalist question is "Was it worth all that trouble?" I like very much Lessing's redoing of FK (96). The frogs ask the water-snake "If you want to be our king, why do you eat us?" "Because you asked for me." "I did not ask for you," answers one frog. "Then I have to eat you for not asking for me!" The colophon points out that the Chodowiecki illustrations are presented here in their original size. There seem to be more songs early and more fables late in the booklet. There is a T of C at the end.

1973/85 Fábulas. Edición: Mercedes Vich Adell. Diseño e ilustraciones: Rita Gutiérrez Varela. (c)1973 Francisco M. Mota. Primera reimpresión. Ciudad de La Habana: Editorial Gente Nueva. Gift of Linda Schlafer, March, '95.

Seventy-six fables in verse from about twenty-five different poets. Each fable gets one simple design. It seems that only La Fontaine's fables are admitted from outside of Spanish literature--and a translation of Emerson's fable about the mountain and the squirrel (79). Samaniego, Iriarte, and Rafael Pombo have the most fables here. TB, attributed to La Fontaine, has two birds for its travellers (18)! An unlikely little treasure of an anthology, and my first book from Cuba!

1973? Sidonie Cigale. Raymond Lichet. Illustré par Maurice Grimaud. Pamphlet. Textes en Français Facile (Junior). Printed in France. Paris: Hachette. $2 from Pierre Cantin, Montreal, Feb., '02.

Here is another charming kids' reader with pleasant illustrations. See the companion in the series, "La Souris des Villes et la Souris des Champs," which I have listed under "1980?" Madame Félicité Fourmi is the concierge in Sidonie Cigale's apartment house. Félicité has, apparently, no fun at all in her life. She is the only person not delighted with Sidonie's singing. One crisis occurs when Sidonie waters plants on the seventh floor and gets a few drops on Félicité's head below. Sidonie spends everything she gets on clothes. Of course, she is three months behind on her rent. Sidonie gets an audition at the television station, where she sings three of her own songs. She is so successful that she earns more than enough to pay the rent--and gets an invitation to appear weekly on the show. She returns home to find that Félicité has fallen and hurt herself. She cares for Félicité and they become friends. After a very happy party, Félicité pledges to buy a television and to watch Sidonie perform on TV every week. There are three pages of exercises for a student to complete at the end. There is much more text--and more variation from the usual fable--than one would expect in a forty-eight page pamphlet.

 

To top

1974

1974 A Concordance to the Fables and Tales of Jean de la Fontaine. Edited by J. Allen Tyler. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. $9.95 at Green Apple, San Francisco, Dec., '90.

A good fat concordance! Who could pass up a $55 book reduced to $10? The introduction notes that 1705 was the time when the two sets of six books of fables became Books I-XII.

1974 A Fable of Bidpai. Translated into English by Nicholas Siegl. With fourteen original woodblock prints cut by Helen Siegl. #103 of 300, signed by Helen Siegl. With a brief signed inscription by Claire Van Vliet, designer, printer, and binder. Printed in USA. West Burke, VT: Janus Press. $150 from Truepenny Books, Tucson, AZ, through Advanced Book Exchange, Oct., '00.

From the Buch der Weisheit of 1483, printed in Ulm. Large octavo, handsewn into mustard-colored Strathmore Beau Brilliant cover over boards, with a small woodcut of a rooster by Helen Siegl on the front cover. Twenty pages, with text set in monotype Times New Roman, and printed letterpress in two colors on French-folded handmade Hosokawa paper. The wood engravings are printed in a total of five different colors in all. The first of the fables is new to me. A proud cock thinks he is a prophet for predicting that day will come. A flattering fox successfully lures him down so that he can tell his companions that he has kissed the head of a prophet. The fox instead bites off his head and eats him. From there we turn to the "Friendship" story of raven and mouse. We track them through travel and the inclusion of the turtle. The woodcut of raven grasping mouse by the tail and arriving across mountains at the turtle's pond is exquisite. It is at the center of this booklet. Soon the stag is included, and we read the story of the four outwitting the hunter. A great last illustration shows the hunter carrying home two bundles of wood instead of the stag and turtle. Each page is folded, so that it is printed on just one side. I have known Siegl's work in much simpler children's books. I enjoy this finer work from her!

1974 A first book of Aesop's Fables. Retold by Marie Stuart. Illustrated by Robert Ayton. Loughborough: Ladybird. Gift of Maryanne Rouse, June, '91. Extra copy with earlier back cover for $2.45 distributed through Hutchinson Books of Lewiston, Maine.

A small version--with twelve fables--of the later Ladybird large-format book Aesop's Fables (1975). It looks like the illustrations are the same. WL is here but not in the larger-format book.

1974 A Joszivi Roka: Fabulak (The Kind-Hearted Fox: Fables).  Edited by Nagy Geza.  Paperbound.  Cluj-Napoca, Romania: Dacia Publishing House.  980 Hungarian Forints from Antikvarium, Budapest, Hungary, Sept., '20.

The T of C at the end of this 284-page Hungarian pocketbook shows a wide array of fabulists, starting with "Panchatantra," Aesop, and Phaedrus and carrying through many others.  No illustrations.

1974 A second book of Aesop's Fables. Retold by Marie Stuart. Illustrated by Robert Ayton. Loughborough: Ladybird. Gift of Maryanne Rouse, June, '91. Extra copy with earlier back cover for $1.95 distributed through Hutchinson Books of Lewiston, Maine, from Mr. Mopps', Berkeley.

A small version--with twelve fables--of the later Ladybird large-format book Aesop's Fables (1975). It looks like the illustrations are the same. "The Wolves and the Dogs" is here but not in the larger-format book.

1974 A Selection of Aesop's Fables. Re-written especially for children by Barbara Sanders. Illustrated by Christopher Sanders. London: Castle Books: Murray. See 1952?/74.

1974 Aesop's Fables. Illustrated by Charles Robinson. Hardbound. Printed in Great Britain. London: The Minerva Press & Hunkydory Designs Limited. NLG 25 from Antiquariaat Jos Wijnhoven, Diemen, the Netherlands, Jan., '99.

See my comments on the original 1895 version, which this splendid little book reproduces right down to its endpapers. The cover is green now, but it reproduces the same wonderful gold embossed illustration of a stork and a reading child. The same design is on the dust-jacket here. This sturdy little book represents what a reproduction should be!

1974 Aesop's Fables. Miniature. With reproductions of the original woodcuts. No editor acknowledged. (Illustrations are from Ulm.) Introduction is signed by "F.E.I." #81 of 250. New Hampshire: Hillside Press. $10 at Pepper and Stern in Boston, Dec., '89.

A nicely executed miniature, with some pen markings on the title page and elsewhere. Eight fables, each with an illustration. And Aesop is illustrated in the frontispiece. The illustrations are more "original" than the introduction lets on, since they are not from Caxton but from Ulm. Caxton's spelling is preserved.

1974 Aesop's Fables in Translations by L. N. Tolstoy (Russian).  Edited by I.F. Pankin.  Illustrations by M.A. Skobelev.  Introduction by E. Babaev.  Hardbound.  Tula, Russia: Priokskoye Publishing House.  $29 from Old Soviet Vintage through Etsy, August, '23.

This book of 113 + 7 pages is a lovely addition to the collection, especially for two reasons.  First, it is unusual to find a Russian book of fables that does not come from or through Krylov.  I had not been aware that Tolstoy told this many Aesopic fables, and there are 69 of them here!  Secondly, the artistry here is wonderfully engaging.  Among the best pairs of colored illustrations are TMCM (30-31); "Lion, Bear, and Fox" (54-55); GA (60-61); GGE, with the farmer finishing off a chicken bone (62-63); FG (70-71); and WC (80-81).  I do not think I have ever before seen the mouse escape the frog (15)!  Does that not vitiate Aesop's use of the story just before his execution?  There is a T of C at the end of the five books here.

1974 Aesop's Fables.  Denison B. Hull.  Decorations by Rainey Bennett.  Paperbound.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  See 1960/74.

1974 Aesop's Fables in the Executive Suite. John S. Morgan. Illustrated by Larry Sowinski. First printing? Dust jacket. NY: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. $21.49 from Greg Williams, March, '96. Extra copy for $25 from Greg Williams, Dec., '95.

I learned of this book through the Milwaukee Public Library in 1983 and had been looking for it ever since. Now that I have it, I find it somewhat disappointing. It is a set of 42 (41, says the dust jacket, slightly blistered on the good copy and more blistered on the extra copy) alphabetical chapters based on traditional fables. Each chapter has a standard format: a limerick on the traditional fable, Aesop's moral, several pages presenting and analyzing contemporary cases, and a closing admonitory moral. As the author points out, the book could be called "Fables for Promotion," since promotion seems to be the goal throughout. I had hoped that the limericks might be useful, but they are wordy and oblique. The most useful thing in the book might be the cover's cartoon of Aesop with an attache case, repeated in black-and-white on the title-page.

1974 Alumette: A fable, with due respect to Hans Christian Andersen, the Grimm Brothers, and the Honorable Ambrose Bierce. Tomi Ungerer. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. $4.50 from Renaissance, June, '98.

Since Ungerer calls this version of "The Little Match Girl" a fable, I include it in the collection. As always, it is a pleasure to watch Ungerer at work. With the poor girl's last wish on a desperate Christmas Eve, she occasions a storm of wishes descending on her from the skies. She gives these things away to the poor, while the mayor calls out the army. People soon learned to give and serve wherever people needed help. A provocative little story from a great liberal artist.

1974 Bajky. Podle starych bajek vypravuje Oldrich Syrovatka. Obrazky Nakreslil Jiri Trnka. Hardbound. Prague: Albatros. $8 from Zachary Cohn, Prague, by mail, Nov., '01.

Here is the Czech that lies totally behind the books I have in English (1962) and Spanish (1965) and partially behind the larger versions with eighty-three fables in English (1985) and French (1974 and 1974/96). This version has forty-four fables. As far as I can tell, nothing is said here about La Fontaine; he is mentioned in all the other versions. There is a T of C at the back. As in the parallel versions, there are ten full-colored full-page illustrations besides nine full pages, numerous initials, and a T of C design in black-and-white. Should one presume that an earlier Czech edition antedated or accompanied the English (1962) and Spanish (1965) versions?

1974 Basni. I.A. Krylov. Ya. Manukhin. Hardbound. Moscow: dlya mladshero shkolnovo bozrasta: Uzda Elbs Malysh. $3.25 from Valentina Kudinova, Kharkiv, Ukraine, June, '12.

This is a large-format (8¼" x 10½") pamphlet with a fine cello-playing bear talking with a bird on its cover. The back cover serves to offer lots of bibliographical information on the bear's music stand, with the bird still perched at its center. In between are GA and "Quartet" with lively full-page and partial-page colored illustrations. A lovely addition to the collection! Thank you for finding this pamphlet, Valentina! The series seems to mean "For those of young school age" and the publisher has "Malysh" -- "child" -- in its name. 

1974 Der Ochse und das Harfenspiel: Fabeln aus aller Welt. Herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort versehen von Ingrid und Klaus-Dieter Sommer. Illustriert von Wolfgang Würfel. Mit einer Einführung von Günter Kunert. Dust jacket. Hardbound. Berlin: Verlag Neues Leben. DM 7 from Dresdener Antiquariat, Dresden, August, '01. Extra copy for DM 8 from Zentralantiquariat, Leipzig, July, '95. 

Here is a collection of fables noteworthy for the spread of its sources. Almost one hundred and fifty authors are represented, many with a number of fables. The fables are arranged by author, and there is a T of C showing the authors and fables on 368-82. (A partial but very long list also occurs on the back flyleaf.) Just before the T of C, there is an AI of authors. Just before that there are four pages of comments on unusual words and concepts, listed by page numbers. One of the qualities of this collection is its immense geographic spread. The second author cited is Asian. One section (262-287) takes up fables from India, Africa, Vietnam, Indonesia, Tibet, Japan, and Korea, respectively. Not only cultures but also overlooked individuals are represented here, including Goethe, James Thurber, Bertold Brecht, Wilhelm Hey, and Augusto Monterroso. The art work is particularly appealing. There are two principal forms of art here: small tailpieces, like the excellent presentation of DS on 28, and half-page combinations of speaker and poster, like LM on 17. The art is continued on both covers. The same playful style is evident in the colored dj. This book will turn out, I believe, to be a valuable resource.

1974 Des Carrés et des Ronds: Fables et Contes Illustrés. Jean Ache. Preface Françoise Xenakis. Paperbound. Paris: André Balland. Can $39.99 from Roxane Chapdelaine, Beloeil, Quebec, through eBay, Sept., '11.

This book, "About Squares and Circles," is itself almost square (7¾" x 8"). It is a highly imaginative work showing the stages of eight fables and two contes in geometric figures. OF is the first and simplest. A large black-and-white circle remains unmoved while a small red figure adds successive layers to itself through the first five of the six panels. In the sixth, the many-layered figure breaks into three sections. This six-part story is much like the four-part story on the front cover. Sometimes, as in WL (26-27), it is more the angle of an object -- here the wolf's head -- that is suggestive. In the sixth of six panels there is no longer a sheep, and the wolf's head has reversed its direction away from the stream. MM and TH are the two hardest for me to figure out. Other fables include "Le Héron," FC, FG, "The Fox and the Goat," LM, and WC. The two stories are "Le Petit Poucet" and "La Belle au Bois Dormant." This is in many ways a minimalist book that leaves plenty of open spaces and provides minimal information; it invites the reader to put things together.

1974 Die Maus mit dem Sparbuch. Franz Josef Bogner. Fotografiken Walter Flögel. 2. Auflage. Paperbound. Bern: Zytglogge Verlag. €8 from Antiquariat Friedrich Welz, Heidelberg, August, '09.

This paperback starts off with a bang with the story of the ant that played its "Grille" (fiddle?) all summer for the working ants. So in the winter, they made her dance for them until she dropped dead. Next comes a tiger who does nothing when a chicken happens to land in its lair; he even feeds the chicken from his food as much as she wants. People founded a society for understanding of animals of all sorts and elected him an honorary member. But he was just waiting for the chicken to fatten up. So one day he ate it. Since he was a cultivated tiger, he ate with knife and fork and a well washed napkin. Now the club calls itself "Club for Maintaining Good Table Etiquette." It has grown greatly and Tiger is now the honorary president. The title-story tells of a mouse with a bankbook. A terrible winter drove many mice to die of hunger, but not this mouse; he could eat his bankbook! FS gets told differently; the fox concerned itself with emptying all the wine glasses at the stork's feast! An inspired vine-louse announces the coming damnation of all vine-lice because of the demon alcohol. None of them listen. She places herself on a an old potato stake but soon dies there of stomach cramps. Perhaps she gave up alcohol too late.. This is clever, light-hearted stuff, worthy of fable! The book is decorated with various zebra prints. 

1974 Dobutsu Guwa-Shu (Animal Fable Collection). Translated by Kusuo Seki, Illustrated by Janus Gurabiasuki (Grabiansky). First edition. Originally published in German as Das Grosse Fabelbuch ((c)1974 Verlag Carl Ueberreuter, Vienna). Boxed. Orion Press. Tokyo: Bookman. ¥1000 at Miwa, Kanda, July, '96.

My travels have yielded this book now in four forms: besides this Japanese edition, I have one in English, The Big Book of Animal Fables (1965), one published in Germany by Deutscher Bücherbund in Stuttgart and Hamburg (1965?), and the original published in Vienna (1965?). I am confused by the copyright (1974) that this book gives to Ueberreuter's edition—surprised because of the earlier date (1965) noted above for the English (and German?) editions. I count ninety-nine fables. As I wrote of the English version, Grabiansky's art combines some one-colored and some excellent multi-colored watercolors. Everything about this book is solid and first-class, from the printing of the art to the paper to the binding. This time I enjoyed the chicks and the farmer's feet (38-9), the two arrangements for Krylov's "Quartet" (77-78), and the fox and wolf in buckets (161).

1974 Fabeln, Parabeln und Gleichnisse.  Reinhard Dithmar.  Third edition.  Paperbound.  Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag.  See 1970/74.

1974 Fabels: Uitklapboeken.  Tekst: Saiko Hieda.  Illustraties: Kuniro Fukazawa.  Paperbound.  Belgium: Uitgeverij Atlantis.  €4.50 from Antiquariaat Klikspaan, Leiden, through Abe, July, '16..

I thought that I recognized this book.  A little tracking revealed that Hieda had done "Aesop's Fables" for Rand McNally in 1972.  How nice to have found another "Uitklapboeken"!  This version seems to eliminate mention of Aesop both in the title and in individual fables; in the English version the moral was introduced by "Aesop says."  I wrote of the English edition that it was my first "flip out book," in which a two-page spread includes a page that folds out to make a triptych.  The pages are well matched to create two different pictures using the image on the left, one with the right-hand page folded in and one with this page folded out.  For example, the lion opens his eye to see the mouse and then catches him; again, the lion is in the net and then out of it.  The page-matches are well executed.  LM and TH each gets two sets of fold-outs.  This is the first lion I know of who cries "Help!" and he uses English to do it!  OF, FS, DS, and SW have one pair of fold-outs each.  Simple art.  The cover-illustration--the donkey carrying a bag marked "salt"--is not involved in the book's six stories!  And the Dutch word for salt is "zout."

1974 Fabler af Leonardo da Vinci.  Samlet og gengivet af Bruno Nardini; Pa dansk ved Grete Juel Jorgensen.  Illustreret af Adriana Saviozzi Mazza.  Hardbound.  Copenhagen: Lademann.  150 Kroner from Vangsgaards Antikvariat, Copenhagen, August, '14. 

On a European trip just finished, I found two copies of Leonardo's fables, one in Italian from 1972 and this in Danish.  I already had three copies, one in English from 1973 and two distinct volumes in German, from 1973 and 1975.  It turns out that the Italian copy, "Leonardo Da Vinci: Favole e Leggende," is the original on which the English, German first volume, and this Danish edition are all based.  As I wrote of the English edition, this is a lovely book, especially for the beautiful colored art on its big pages.  The fables range in type and quality.  Some deal more than the Aesopic tradition with the elements:  fire, water, stone, and steel.  Some are good Aesopic stuff:  "The Mouse, the Weasel, and the Cat;" "The Tree and the Pole;" "The Ermine;" "The Walnut and the Bell Tower;" and "The Falcon and the Duck."  The morals are surprisingly traditional, allegorical, and moralistic.  Two of the best are statements of faith: "The Pelican" and "The Eagle Burning Off His Feathers."  The best illustration among many good ones is of the butterfly and the flame.  This edition puts the unicorn and virgin onto its cover   Here the T of C is at the book's end.  In both the Italian and Danish editions, Margaret Meek seems not to be acknowledged for the introduction as she is in the English edition.  This book has a slightly smaller format (7½" x 10") and it appears that some of the illustrations have been cropped.

1974 Fables: A Play in One Act.  Jerome McDonough.  Paperbound.  Schulenburg, TX: I.E. Clark.  $7.50 from Rosebud Books, Golconda, IL, through Biblio.com, Feb., '20.

Here is a play script 21 pages long.  The play, composed of five "miniatures," was first performed at West Texas State University.  The five miniatures are "The Clowns"; "The Genii"; "The Glutton"; "The Bogey"; and "The Drums."  A paragraph in the "Notes on the Play" gives a quick indication of the subject matter: "The playlets are: The Clowns, depicting the cycle of life.  Two commedia-like clowns build a coffin in pantomime around an old, dying couple.  A young couple, pushed to maturity by an impatient stage manager, takes the place of the dead ones.  The Genii, in which a girl wishes that a geni would appear, and one does.  (Or is it just a boy from the next town?)  The Glutton, a touching symbollically (sic) dynamic scene mainly in pantomime.  A tough character tries to take food away from a young man who eats – and lives – with gusto.  The Bogey, showing a harried businessman vainly seeking escape from some nameless something (conformity, perhaps?).  The Drums, in which two armies play absurdly at war while a young couple whisper words of love at the warriors' feet."  The meaning of "fable" is stretched here, I believe.

1974 Fables choisies de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Jiri Trnka. Dust jacket. Printed in Czechoslovakia. Paris: Grund. Gift of Maryanne Rouse from New Orleans.

Black-and-white illustrations and colored pictures are intermixed. The best among them are of the lap-donkey, FM, the crow with plumes, and MSA. AI at the beginning. A lovely treasure in the French tradition. See Fables of La Fontaine (1972) for a more original version of the illustrations.

1974 Fables: Five Very Short Operas: Poems by Jean de La Fontaine, Translated by Marianne Moore.  Ned Rorem.  Paperbound.  Milwaukee, WI: Boosey & Hawkes.  $25 from Penny Lane Music Books, Bowling Green, VA, through eBay, Oct., '13.  

This work was commissioned by the University of Tennessee at Martin for the dedication of its Fine Arts Building.  It was first performed on May 21, 1971.  The bottom of the first page of the first piece shows a copyright of 1974 by Boosey & Hawkes.  The five pieces present Marianne Moore's translations of "The Lion in Love"; "The Sun and the Frogs"; "The Bird Wounded by an Arrow"; FG; and "The Animals Sick of the Plague."  Those translations are given in pure text form on the two pages following the title-page.  I could not locate an online performance.  I did locate a CD at Boston Conservatory Alphin Library.

1974 Fables for Meditators: A Collection of Original Fables. By Colin Ingram. Fable Illustrations by Ned Mueller. Drawings by Helen Wood. Paperbound. San Anselmo, CA: The Cosmic Press. $15 from Johnson's Books, Sharonville, OH, through Bibliofind, Sept., '98.

This paperbound 8½" x 11" volume contains twenty-four items after a "Prefable." The accent here is on meditation. From my reading of the first half of the book, the stories seem to be in the vein of Tony DiMello's work. They are at their best when they end in a conundrum or joke, like "Ramaguna and the Yogi"--especially in its optional epilogue--and "A Fable of Progress." This book is representative of the sixties and seventies in California! On the one hand, there is the mysticism of "Test-Flight," which seems dated as I read it now. On the other, there is the sadness and realism of "The Fable of Lessening Need," in which two people love each other and marry but find other things and separate. Each story has a different color paper, and full-page images of St. Michael and Shiva open and close the volume.

1974 Fábulas: Esopo, Fedro, La Fontaine, Samaniego, Iriarte.  Adaptación de Julia Daroqui.  Ilustraciones de Raúl Stévano.  Hardbound.  Buenos Aires: Colección Estrella:  Editorial Sigmar S.A.  See 1963/74.

1974 Fairy Tales and Fables: The Hare and the Tortoise.  Pamphlet.  London: Brown Watson.  $21.95 from Kenny Parolini, August, '22.

This pamphlet of eight unpaginated pages contains two stories, TH and "Dogs and Cats."  The former is a segment of a work already in the collection, "My Book of Fairy Tales and Fables," from Brown Watson.  For that work, I had guessed a publication date of 1978.  As I commented there, the hare and the tortoise first talk of a "race to the end of the world," but settle on a nearby tree trunk as a goal.  The hare sleeps before he even takes a step!  This all happened back when competitions were held only among animals.  I find it curious that this large (about 8" x 10¾") pamphlet was printed in the German Democratic Republic.  Its cover features a cat writing an Italian note in front of a dog.  The world of publication history has its curiosities!

1974 Gedichte und Fabeln. Demjan Bedny; herausgegeben und mit einem Nachwort Versehen von Fritz Mierau. Mit 38 Fotobeilagen von Plakaten und Karikaturen. Paperbound. Leipzig: Reclam Universal-Bibliothek Band 587: Verlag Philipp Reclam. €5 from an unknown source, August, '06.

Pridworow Jefim Alexejewitsch became Demjan Bedny during the Russian Revolution. He became a fervent Marxist and was a founder of Pravda. This disintegrating East German paperback celebrates him, perhaps first of all with the frequent posters, cartoons, and photographs from his life and times, from his part in the Revolution to the time of war with the Nazis. His two autobiographies help to situate him in history. The reader interested in fables will find several things here. Three of the earliest pieces in this book are fables. "Die revoltierenden Hasen"; "Spinne, Fliege und Biene"; and "Wolf und Lamme" (14-16, with a following illustration for the last) treat freedom, the struggle for ideas, and the deceitfulness of the stronger. A later piece, "Spinnen und Fliegen" (56-57) is directed against the Russian Orthodox Church. The priests, like spiders, plunder the farmers like flies but get away with it because of the people's piety. "Sei auf der Hut" (113-14), subtitled "Literatur-pädagogische Fabel," is not really a fable but a mockery of Krylov's fables, influenced as they are by La Fontaine. "Die faschistische Krähe oder der Pseudopfau" (121-22) is BF directed against the Nazis, with a good illustration. Alas, the cover has become separated from this cheap paperback. 

1974 Holiday Plays for Puppets or People. By Eleanor Boylan. With Illustrations by Marian K. Harris. Paperbound. Rowayton, CT: New Plays Books: New Plays, Inc. $8 from RandR Books, Raleigh, NC, through Ebay, May, '00.

This is an 8½" x 11" paperbound book with soft covers formerly owned by the Staunton Public Library. It starts with three Aesop's Fables--GA, TMCM, and DLS--as the T of C just before the first points out. The book goes on through a collection strong on fairy tales and parables. The introduction explains that stage directions are given for puppet performances because these constitute a less familiar medium. There are designs for ant mother and child, grasshopper, king winter, and an ant house just before GA. Mother ant takes pity on the cold grasshopper and brings him into their home to get warm. TMCM begins with the invitation to the city. The city visit includes getting lost out among shoppers. As the two, reunited, again enter the city home, the country mouse immediately encounters the cat, and that experience is enough to send her packing. The donkey makes a conscious decision to scare the fox with a roar.

1974 Illustration 63: Zeitschrift für die Buchillustration: Heft 1/1974. Benno Huth and Alfred Pohl for fables. #709. Paperbound. Munich: €20 from Antiquariat Rolf & Monika Ihring, Berlin Schöneberg, August, '07.

This is one of two unusual finds in a lovely Berlin used bookshop. I did not know of the magazine Illustration 63. Antiquariat Ihring had several copies, and I looked through them. Not surprisingly, there were many fables represented in the good artworks reproduced in the issues. I found two especially nicely done and took them along. Each issue of the magazine includes a set of "Beilagen," individual pieces printed on their own and included inside the back cover. This issue includes two "Beilagen" that offer fables. Benno Huth's smaller two-colored linocut presents "Canum legati ad Iovem," the dogs sent to Iove. It is a funny illustration. Alfred Pohl presents in larger format a woodcut representing Iriarte's version of Aesop's "Two Goats." As might be expected, it is a dynamic illustration. What I seem to be learning from Wikipedia and German Google is that the magazine died after seventy-nine issues.

1974 Illustration 63: Zeitschrift für die Buchillustration: Heft 2/1974. Illustrations by Archibald Bajorat and Otto Schlosser for fables. #725. Paperbound. Munich. €20 from Antiquariat Rolf & Monika Ihring, Berlin Schöneberg, August, '07.

This is one of two unusual finds in a lovely Berlin used bookshop. I did not know of the magazine Illustration 63. Antiquariat Ihring had several copies, and I looked through them. Not surprisingly, there were many fables represented in the good artworks reproduced in the issues. I found two especially nicely done and took them along. Each issue of the magazine includes a set of "Beilagen," individual pieces printed on their own and included inside the back cover. This issue includes an article on Kafka's illustrators and shows a good combination of text and illustration by Archibald Bajorat for Kafka's "Kleine Fabel" (61). One of the "Beilagen" is Otto Schlosser's personally signed, energetic linocut of "The Tortoise and the Eagle." It is about 15½" x 11½" folded once in the middle, with text on the left and strong illustration on the right. What I seem to be learning from Wikipedia and German Google is that the magazine died after seventy-nine issues.

1974 Juan Ruiz: Arcipreste de Hita: Libro de Buen Amor II. Edición, Introducción y Notas de Jacques Joset. Paperbound. Printed in Spain. Clásicos Castellanos 17. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A. $2.50 from Selected Works, Chicago, Nov., '95.

Espasa-Calpe here does a new edition of Ruiz' important work with a new editor. See my copies of their old edition under 1913/67. Here I have the first printing of just the second volume. I have later printings listed under 1974/84 for the first volume and 1974/81 for the second volume. The format is the same, except that a second apparatus criticus seems to have been added above the first. Was perhaps a new manuscript discovered? We again begin with stanza 892. There seems to be some additional textual material after the finish at stanza 1728. At the end there are two elements where there used to be three. There are still an index of words and proper names and a T of C for both volumes. What has dropped out is a list of refrains and proverbs in both volumes. For what I know about Libro de Buen Amor, see the translations done in 1933 by Kane and in 1970 by Mignani and Di Cesare.

1974 Kalilah und Dimnah: Orientalische Fabeln.  Husain Al-Kerbala-I.  Mit zehn alten orientalischen Miniaturen.  Nachwort von Hans-Jürgen Jordan.  Boxed; erste auflage.  Hardbound.  Frankfurt-am-Main: Insel Verlag.  €6.50 from Der-Philo-soph, Viersen, Germany, July, '14.  

There are several unusual things about this lovely book.  It is boxed, and comes with a place-marking ribbon.  While published by a Frankfurt firm, it is printed -- very nicely -- in the German Democratic Republic.  I checked and found that Insel Verlag had two parts, in Leipzig and Frankfurt, during the time of Germany's being split.  A third unusual feature of this book lies in the ten full-page reproductions of the "old oriental colored miniatures."  They include, for example, "Dablaschlim" visiting "Pidpai" (16); the unfaithful woman with her lover in the presence of the unseen guest (72); the wolf, crow, and hyena devouring the camel (104); TT (112); and Dimnah and Schanzabah with the lion (120).  Apparently two of the ten illustrations are on the box.  A final surprising characteristic of this version of Kalilah and Dimna is that the stories are divided into only two "cycles," a beginning cycle around Bidpai and then a long cycle about hypocritical betrayers, followed by "Lehrreichen Unterweisungen" containing some twenty-eight fables.  There is a T of C after Hans-Jürgen Jordan's Nachwort. 

1974 Kater Graustirn: Russische Volksmärchen. Translators Margarete Spady, Marianne Bobrowski, and Günter Löffler. Illustrations by E (Jewgeni) Ratschow (Evgeni Rachev). Hardbound. Moscow: Verlag Progress. DEM 18 from an unknown source, August, '96.

This book is the German reproduction of the Russian Terem-Teremok of 1974 from Progress Publishers in Moscow. It duplicates the work in German, down to the page numbers. It has the same delightful cover embossed in brown, blue, and gold. The bird pictured there is the thrush who plays a key role in "Hähnchen Goldkämmchen" (62). Like that book, this is a treasure. Like its model, this book contains twenty stories. The obverse of the title-page rightly sees these stories as Märchen. As I mentioned in my comment on Terem-Teremok, much of Rachev's art consists in putting the defined (particularly black lines) and the undefined (generally color masses) together in an unique way, as on 113. There is a water stain around the bottom of the spine. The title of the book comes from Leo Tolstoy's "Kater Graustirn, der Hammel und der Ziegenbock," that is, "Gray-Forehead the Cat, the Ram, and the Goat" (138). The clever cat saves the goat and ram from a pack of wolves. This is a sturdy, well produced book.

1974 La Farandole des Animaux: Bestiaire en 100 Fables. Etiennette Bouton. Illustrations de Etienne Bouton. Paperbound. #34, signed by Etiennette Bouton. Le Mans, France: Bouton, Autour Éditeur; Société Littéraire du Maine. 80 Francs from Librairie Bailly, Marché Dauphine, Clignancourt, July, '01.

A farandole is a lively dance from Provence; all the dancers join hands and execute various figures. "Le rat de bibliothèque" (11) turns out to be about judging others. This rat was not strong on classical literature; he just liked to eat and to destroy! "L'aigle et les deux lièvres" (14) shows, with a good simple illustration, that it does not pay to pursue two hares at once. You will get neither of them! In "La palombe et la grenouille" (20, again with a helpful illustration), a frog teaches an envious dove that every life has its own dangers. She is not right to envy a life under water. One of the best of the illustrations is of the unsuccessful monkey guitarist on 39; he accuses his instrument of not being adequate to his talent. Another presents the ill-disposed pelican on 117. A T of C at the back lists the fables. They are divided into five books. This is a pleasant little book containing the art of the publisher and the poetry of an apparent family member. I cannot establish how many copies were printed.

1974 La Fontaine: Fables. Illustrations et rébus de Carelman. Hardbound. Printed in France. Paris: Hachette. 425 Francs from Henry Veyrier, Saint-Ouen, France, August, '99.

One of the loveliest and most imaginative books in the collection. The book presents nineteen fables of La Fontaine with a lovely standard Carelman illustration before each text. But the La Fontaine text is not complete. The moral is stated in very imaginative rebus combinations. These are not your garden variety rebus symbols for little children! I assure any reader from my experience that for a non-native French speaker the exercise of deciphering these morals can be challenging! But never fear--there is a clever appendix listing not only each moral but the rebus combinations that make it up. Both are cleverly printed backwards, but I am doing scans of them that reverse the images for those who do not have a mirror nearby! If you are sharp, you will notice that even part of the information on the book's cover is given in rebus.

1974 la Zorro y el Cuervo. No author or editor acknowledged. Año XXIV, Numero 350. Original copyright by National Periodical Publications. Mexico: Organizacion Editorial Novaro. $3.50, Summer, '89.

A comic book using these two Aesopic characters but not doing an Aesopic fable. Other stories besides the three of the fox and the crow are included. Here is evidence that Aesop's matchups perdure.

1974 Le lièvre et la tortue: Une fable d'Esope. Racontée par J(ean) Lewis. Images de B(onnie) et B(ill) Rutherford. Pamphlet. Paris: Collection Praline: Éditions des deux coqs d'or. $4 from an unknown source, August, '00.

Here is a slightly altered French version of the 1963 Whitman Fuzzy Wuzzy Book, The Tortoise and the Hare. This version makes reference to that edition and Whitman's copyright. In this version, the hare is not fuzzy! This pamphlet is slightly larger in format than that booklet, but the illustrations still have the same size. I will repeat some of my comments from there. After the initial encounter, King Lion commanded the two to race. The race started over a brook. The hare woke up once but looked only back, not forward. Not seeing the tortoise, he went right back to sleep. I miss the fuzz!

1974 Les Plus Belles Fables de la Fontaine: 20 Fables Choisies. Annotated by Diethard Lübke. Paperbound. 2. Auflage. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterwegs Neusprachliche Bibliothek: Verlag Moritz Diesterweg. € 4.72 from Elbe-Team, Dresden, May, '03.

Before the fables start in this 80-page pamphlet, there is a helpful two-page "Bestiaire des Fables," picturing various animals who will appear in these fables. Vocabularies for individual fables then drive students back to the bestiary. About ten full-page black-and-white illustrations are taken from Oudry, Grandville, and Doré. For each fable, there is a text, extensive vocabulary help, and "Indications pour l'explication de la fable." Sometimes there is also a "Texte supplémentaire," like another version of the same fable. Second edition of a book first published with slightly larger page format in 1971.

1974 Le Roman de Renart: Fabliaux du Moyen Age. Adaptées par Jean Sabran. Illustrées par Guy Sabran. Paperbound. Paris: Collection Rouge et Bleue: Editions GP. See 1960/74.

1974 Lion and Mouse. Miniature. Hardbound. #112 of 150. Printed in USA. Mill Valley, CA: Sunflower Press. $32.50 by mail from Broad Ripple Bookshop, Indianapolis, April, '99.

Miniature, 2.5" x 2.5". Green covers on green paper. Aesop's LM story suddenly goes out of whack when the mouse comes running, but it turns out to be the wrong lion! "And mouse waited all his life, but never was asked to help a lion in distress!" The colophon remarks: "What began as an Aesop's fable, soon went out of hand!" The same colophon admits that Cooper Black "is completely inappropriate for setting of text" but was chosen "because it is fat and funny and to see if it could fit such a tiny page." The one illustration shows the lion's present occupation….

1974 Monkey in a Lion's Skin.  Story by Paul White.  Illustrations by Peter Oram.  Second impression.  Hardbound.  A Jungle Doctor Picture Fable:  Moody Press.  See 1973/4.

1974 More Fables of Aesop. Retold and illustrated by Jack Kent. NY: Parents' Magazine Press. $10 from Gloria Timmel, April, '88. Extra copies for $1.50 from Used Books and Unicorns, Kirksville, Oct., '94, for $5 from Bibelots & Books, Seattle, Aug., '93, for $3 from Second Story, and for $1 from the Olive Tree, New Orleans. Also a different extra, "Bound To Stay Bound," for $2 from Second Story's Rockville Warehouse, May, '97.

The sequel to the earlier Jack Kent's Fables of Aesop (1972). Just a wonderful book! Almost every story and illustration could be well used in a lecture. My favorite is "The Cat and Venus." There is real wit in the water-color pictures and real story-sense in the versions, which are—like those in the earlier book—adapted from V.S. Vernon Jones. The Second Story copy has a lighter color background on its massive cover and was owned by the Lafayette Parish Library in Louisiana.

1974 Myths, Fables, and Folktales. Albert R. Kitzhaber and Stoddard Malarkey. Various illustrators, credited on v of the back section. This text comprises sections of Elements in Literature by the same publisher in the same year. NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. $2.95 at Blake, June, '93.

A standard junior-high-school literature text with introductions and questions. There are eight fables, two parables, and fourteen proverbs in the first section (1-17). The fables include five from Aesop (two acknowledge Leaf's version) and one each from Krilof, India, and Thurber. The fable illustrators used include Frasconi, Calder, Bennett, and Wildsmith.

1974 Once Upon a Parable: Fables for the Present. With fifty-two hand-cut illustrations. By Paul E. Beichner. Notre Dame: The University of Notre Dame. Gift of Fr. Tom Caldwell, S.J., Sept., '95.

Eighty stories from a Notre Dame faculty member, a religious of the Holy Cross. Many of them seem dated now as they speak of sensitivity sessions and hi-fis. The mood seems to me to shift dramatically among satire, comedy, and didacticism, and I am not sure why these shifts bother me here and not elsewhere. The closest parallel I can think of is Thurber, but Fr. Beichner is not a Thurber. There are often several options offered for morals. I wrote early that I did not know how many I could take, but then I read them all. Among the best: "Nunc pro Tunc" (21), "Three Catalpa Worms" (32), "The Polar Bears and the Penguins" (39), "The Praying Mantis and the Rose Bugs" (74), "The Abbot, the Abbot, The Abbot" (89), and "The Seeing-Eye Dog" (90). There is strongly Aesopic material on 46, 51, 61, 69, 72, 95, 113, 120, and 123. Note the typos on 21, 46, and 83.

1974 Once Upon a Parable: Fables for the Present. With fifty-two hand-cut illustrations. By Paul E. Beichner. Paperbound. (c)1974 by the University of Notre Dame. NY: Sheed and Ward: Universal Press Syndicate. $2.50 at Blake, June, '94.

See the adjacent listing for the identical hardbound book. The respective title pages list different publishers, and for that reason I list them separately here. The one real addition this paperback version makes lies in describing Beichner on the front cover as "A Contemporary Aesop." See my comments there.

1974 Quand les Betes Parlaient aux Hommes: Contes Africains Suivi des Fables de La Fontaine Traduites en Créole Ivoirien.  L. Anoma Kanié.  Paperbound.  Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; Dakar, Sénégal: Les Nouvelles Editions Africaines.  $20 from Bolerium Books, San Francisco, Nov., '14.  

Here are eighteen illustrated African folktales in French, followed by seven fables of La Fontaine in the Ivory Coast's French creole, without illustrations.  I enjoyed the dialect on GA but found the translator missing what I think are La Fontaine's careful touches pointing the fable towards his own artistry as the cicada.  Similarly, I miss La Fontaine's brusque moral announced at the very beginning of TH.  Easiest of the folktales for me is "Les Gendarmes" (26), which seems very close to a fable.  Each of the folktales is illustrated by a black-and-white full-page illustration.  The artist is not acknowledged.  Might it be Kanié himself?  The book -- with a different cover -- is available these days on Amazon.  At least five Big Ten libraries have this book.

1974 Terem-Teremok. Illustrations by E. Rachev. Dust jacket. Apparently first printing. Moscow: Progress Publishers? $8 from The Old Book Co. of McLean, Jan., '96.

I think I have found a real treasure here. This book is the source from which three other books that I have work: The Little Clay Hut: Russian Folk Tales About Animals (Progress, 1975), Fiabe russe (1976), and another The Little Clay Hut: Russian Folk Tales About Animals (Raduga, 1988). Like Fiabe russe, this book contains twenty fables. In many ways, Rachev's art consists in putting the defined (particularly black lines) and the undefined (generally color masses) together in an unique way, as on 113. The illustrations here may be the best among those of the four parallel editions. I would not be surprised if some of the non-fable art work here duplicates that in other Rachev books that I have whose texts are in Russian. The edition's cover features a very pleasing work (of what story?) in brown, blue, and embossed gold.

1974 The Ant and the Grasshopper: An Animal Fable. English Version by Hilary Smyth. With Pictures by Nemo. Paperbound. Leicester, UK: Colour Knight: Knight: Brockhampton Press. £.99 from an unknown source on eBay, Oct., '06.

This English version uses the pictures one can find in Mes Fables d'Animaux by Touret in Milan. I had guessed for that larger hardbound book of six stories a date of 1975. This 24-page pamphlet uses the illustrations rather than reprints them, sometimes dividing or cropping. Smyth's text shows even more divergence. Where the French there deals with generic characters and returns regularly to the basic themes of work and rest, this story gets more particular and imaginative. Emily the ant goes about various specific tasks. Gordon the grasshopper sings directly to her, and she criticizes his song for not even rhyming. It makes Gordon tired just to see her work. The French ant constructs a ladder to help her harvest. The English ant pretends she does not even hear his plaints and invitations to her to sing. Autumn rains in the English version dampen Gordon's guitar strings, and he can no longer play in tune. Notice, of course, that the grasshopper has become a male in the English, whereas both characters in French are females. The last lines of the French have the ant remembering the earlier mockery of the grasshopper. In English, Emily retorts "A fine time to complain!" In neither version is it explicit that she rejects helping him, but in both she tells him to dance. This is a nice little study in intercultural transposition of a text.

1974 The Bollo Caper: A Fable for Children of All Ages.  Art Buchwald.  Illustrated by Julie Brinckloe.  First editiion.  Hardbound.  Dust-jacket.  Garden City, NY: Doubleday.  $3.49 from Discover Books through ABE, Feb., '19.

This 56-page story is a good political spoof by an accomplished comedian.  Like good satire, it makes its points through conscious exaggeration with a lively sense of congruity and incongruity.  As the flyleaf reads, "This is the story of a leopard fighting for his life and the lives of all fur-coated species.  It is a thrilling chase that starts in Africa, goes to New York City, and finally winds up in Washington, D.C."  Actually, it includes one more venue, but I will leave that to the reader.  I agree with the flyleaf: the book is "filled with drama, suspense, and humor."

1974 The Chickadees: a contemporary fable. By Conrad Hyers. Illustrated by Ed Piechocki. Second printing. Dust jacket. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. $10.80 from Greg Williams, Dec., '94.

I found this tale at first very engaging. Before long, however, it started to creak. The story touches on Christianity, Buddhism, drugs, and ecology. Its lesson seems to be "Enjoy and be what you are." Its forty-eight pages of story give some sense of the contemporary size range available for a "fable." The dust jacket is torn.

1974 The Elephant and his Secret: Based on a Fable by Gabriela Mistral/El Elefante y su Secreto. Bilingual. Translated and Adapted by Doris Dana. Illustrated by Antonio Frasconi. First edition. Dust jacket. A Margaret K. McElderry Book. NY: Atheneum. $.50 at the Milwaukee Public Library, Nov., '95.

Do not overlook the other book done by this team: Crickets and Frogs: A Fable by Gabriela Mistral/Grillos y Ranas: Una Fábula de Gabriela Mistral (1972). The tale explains how the elephant got his form and physical characteristics--and how with his secret he eventually saved all the other animals. The purple, orange-red, and black-and-white art work is very striking. Full two-page spreads of art alternate with two pages of text, Spanish on the left and English on the right.

1974 The Etymologist of Aesops Fables. Containing the construing of his Latine fables into English; also The Etymologist of Phaedrus fables, containing the construing of Phaedrus (a new found yet auncient Author) into English, verbatim. Both very necessarie helps for young schollers. Compiled by Simon Sturtevant. London: Printed by Richard Field for Robert Dexter. Reprinted by Walter J. Johnson, Inc. Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, Ltd. See 1602/1974.

1974 The Fable of Fat Fanny or What Could Happen to You If You Don't Stick to Your Diet! Dean Norman. Hardbound. Cleveland: The Sunbeam Library: American Greetings. $12 from Lotzabooks, Garland, TX, Feb., '11.

I listed the original version of this booklet under "1960?" since it included no date. The present version is clearly copyrighted 1974 on the inside front-cover. The cover design is new: orange letters against a green background with stars around. The letters of the title no longer suggest fat as they did then. Otherwise the books are, for all I can tell, identical. Let me include my comments from the original version. This is a small hardbound book of twenty pages about 4¼" x 4¾". It is inscribed "To Mom from LAH." The title-page changes the sub-title to: "If you have trouble sticking to your diet, maybe this story will give you inspiration." Fat Fanny starts as an egg on a blade of grass. The egg hatches and starts eating. Soon she is a big fat centipede-like blob. Others tease her, saying things like "Your mother must have been a dirigible." Fanny decides on a crash diet and spins herself into a cocoon. When Fat Fanny hatches out of her cocoon, she is a gorgeous butterfly. The cartoon here may be the only X-rated cartoon of a butterfly that I have seen! I never thought of a butterfly's body as having breasts! Here comes the shock of this little book. When one turns the page, one reads "Then a bird ate her." "Moral: Better to eat like a bird than to be eaten by one." 

1974 The Fable of the Sick Lion: A Fifteenth-Century Blockbook. Catalogue prepared by Richard S. Field. Paperbound. Printed in USA. Middletown, CT: Davison Art Center: Wesleyan University. $24.95 from Ibis, Hamilton, Ontario, through Alibris, August, '02. Extra copy for $6 from ElephantBooks.com, Gilroy, CA, Oct., '02.

This is an 111-page exhibition catalogue. There are black-and-white copies of nine woodcuts from the Berlin and Heidelberg Sick Lion blockbooks along with the original German text of this "fable." In fact, the fable reads more like a portion of a beast epic. This blockbook represents the first printed fable of any kind, at least in the West. A six-page English translation follows (28-33). Interesting features of the story include the catalogue of animals reacting to the lion's sickness at the beginning of the tale and to the flaying of the wolf at the end. The dog is the one animal faithful to the lion, as he laments the sickness of his master. The wolf survives the flaying. The story here has lessons to make about obedience to one's lords, slander, sacrifice (so Field maintains here), and false friendship. The following "Introduction" tells us that the earliest blockbooks were created in Holland and Germany in the late 1440's. The blockbook was not the precursor of the modern book. It was more its competition for some twenty-five or thirty years. Sections of the introduction deal with the physical characteristics of the Sick Lion manuscripts; the text; the style and technique; iconography; and the literary tradition of this fable. In fact, it belonged to the Extravagantes. This fable has been only rarely illustrated. There is a fine summary of the focus in various Renard traditions from 1180 through 1342 (79). This fable is by contrast with them more naïve and unsophisticated. It is a popular tale offering moral teaching for the masses. Field offers a good sketch of the history of this fable before this blockbook, and he traces the places where this story departs from some branches of previous tradition. In the end, Field finds this version of the fable unresolved in terms of meaning or lesson. Perhaps the fable is a negative argument for fidelity to the church, since no other authority (neither wolf nor fox nor lion) is ultimately trustworthy. There are illustrations from other blockbooks scattered throughout the catalogue.

1974 The Woman with the Eggs. Hans Christian Andersen. Adapted by Jan Wahl. Pictures by Ray Cruz. Hardbound. Printed in USA. NY: Crown Publishers. $1 from The Friends of the Minneapolis Public Library Book Store, March, '99.

I had not realized before that Andersen had done an adaptation of MM when I found this book on a Minneapolis book-crawl. The woman has one hen and saves each day's egg until she has a dozen, for which she will "get a whole dollar!" Her reveries with her basket of eggs on her head move through two more hens to six more hens. She will sell half the eggs and hatch half and soon buy a small sheep and a gaggle of geese. Next she will have a pig and a cow or two, and she will build a barn and a sty. Soon she will have a fine house and servants and a handsome farmer husband with a farm bigger than hers. She will be haughty and grand, so superior that she will toss her head at everybody. The last spread has a good "Splatt!" Lively simple colored two-page spreads with a very vigorous--if proud and silly--woman.

1974 Treasured Tales of Childhood. Put together by Barbara Simons and Ruth Rooney. Nashville: The Southwestern Company. $15 through Bibliofind from Nanny's Web, State College, PA, Oct., '97.

The seventh of eight sections of this book is given to reproducing—with some omissions—Anne Sellers Leaf's Aesop's Fables from Rand McNally in 1952. The omissions include "The Cat, the Cock, and the Young Mouse," GGE, and WS. The larger page format here allows illustrations and story to be spread out further. The editor cleverly cuts the boy going to shout "Wolf!" in half; the reader has to turn the page to see the other half. With this volume I have included the two others sent by Nanny's Web from the "Treasured Tales" series: Stories About People and Stories About Animals, neither of which contains fables.

1974 Trois Braves Petits Boucs et Le Loup and les Chevreaux: Fables. Illustrations de Richard Scarry. Pamphlet. Les Petits Livres d'Argent. Printed in France. Paris: Éditions des Deux Coqs d'Or. See 1953/74.

1974 Twenty Famous Fables.  Adapted and told by Anne Webb.  Illustrated by Helen Haywood.  Hardbound.  Nelson Young World.  $12 from World of Books USA through eBay, Sept., '16.

I wondered why I had not come upon this book before.  Well, I have come upon it!  Nelson seems to have taken over or joined with Young World and republished "Fables for Little People" from 1972.  Then it was "A Little People's Library Book," and now it is "A Young World Library Book."  The T of C has disappeared and now Nelson does its printing not in Ipswich but in Exeter, at least for this book. As I wrote of the earlier book, here are twenty fables, each with two facing pages.  The versions are careful, and the illustrations playful and charming.  In LM, the lion is only tied to a tree; the mouse's task seems easier (9).  SW is well told (14).  The version of BC is clever: it does not specify the problem, but simply has an old and wise mouse ask "Which of us is going to hang the bell around the cat's neck?" (21).  My favorites are the two illustrations for "The Old Lady and the Doctor" (24-25).  Haywood's approach to the underlying character of the new wife is clever: paws, eyes, and ears are catlike (39).  Some young artist doodled on 37.

1974 Two More Moral Tales. By Mercer Mayer. Second printing. Dust jacket. NY: Four Winds Press. $6 from Richard Dix, Portland, March, '96.

A delightful pair of stories in black-and-white without words, printed back-to-back and upside-down in this small-format book. Each story is about twenty pages long. "Sly Fox's Folly" is to sell live animals as clothing to the wrong two customers. "Just a Pig at Heart" shows two pigs getting all gussied up for a date with each other. The fancy date for which they get all dressed up and to which they drive in their expensive car consists of splashing around in the mud! The two first illustrations of Ms. Pig bathing and drying are just wonderful!

1974 Yankee Doodle's Literary Sampler of Prose, Poetry, and Pictures. Being an Anthology of Diverse Works Published for the Edification and/or Entertainment of Young Readers in America Before 1900. Selected from the Rare Book Collections of the Library of Congress and Introduced by Virginia Haviland and Margaret N. Coughlan. Dust jacket. NY: Thomas Y. Crowell Company. $15 in Mobile, June, '84. Paperback for $6 from Bookman's Corner, Chicago, March, '91.

A nice book with huge margins and a good collection of specimens. The black-and-white reproductions are not exceptional, but the color reproductions are better. Fables get several references (113 and 437), but surprisingly few samples: 24, 25, 79, 132 (Aesop Junior in America), and maybe 161. One comment (113) speaks of the continuous flow of editions of Aesop's fables, but they are underrepresented here. This book may be more helpful to social historians than to literary critics.

1974 Zoo of the Gods: Animals in Myth, Legend & Fable. Anthony S. Mercatante. Illustrated by the author. First edition. Dust jacket. NY: Harper & Row. $22.50 from Burton Lysecki Books, Winnipeg, Sept., '97.

An informal, chatty tour through chapters on animals of the water, the earth, the air, and the mind. Aesop appears in some twelve of the sub-chapters given to individual animals. Also mentioned are the Panchatantra, Gesta Romanorum, Hesiod, and La Fontaine. Three indices at the back help, the first of them offering references to the Aesop material. Aesop is frequently the starting point for a given sub-chapter. The annotated bibliography (224) is aimed at introductory material for the general reader.

1974/75 Der Fuchs und der Storch: Weitere Fabeln von La Fontaine.  Nacherzählt und illustriert von Richard Scarry; Deutsch von Karl-Heinz Berger.  2. Auflage.  Hardbound.  Reinbek bei Hamburg, Germany: Ding Dong Bücher: Carlsen Verlag.  €4.20 from Der Ziegelbrenner, Bremen, Germany, March, '21.

Translated from the American "The Fables of La Fontaine" (1963).  Of course I wonder where the "Weitere" comes in.  Here 17 of the 31 fables there are presented.  We have in our collection a fuller rendition in German about 1963 of the American book from 1963.  That German version, simply "Fabeln von La Fontaine" was longer and included both colored and black-and-white illustrations.  It was done by Kinderbuchverlag.  The title-page parade of characters here is just the first of Scarry's charming illustrations!  A particularly lively presentation among many is that of the wolf running away from the dog and his collar.  This is the kind of unpaginated children's book in which the title-page and the last story's last page are pasted to the inside of the covers.

1974/75 The Fantastic Kingdom. A Collection of Illustrations from the Golden Days of Storytelling. Edited by David Larkin. Biographical notes by Margaret Maloney. Second Printing. NY: Ballantine Books. $3.50 at Normal's, Baltimore, Nov., '91.

Forty plates in an oversized paperback, including good reproductions of Detmold's "The Owl and the Birds" (24) and Bransom's "The Frog, the Rat, and the Hawk" (25).

1974/76 Das Leben Äsops. Aus dem Griechischen von Günter Poethke. Mit Einleitung, herausgegeben und erläutert von Wolfgang Müller. Sammlung Dieterich Band 348. 2. Auflage 1976. Dust jacket. Leipzig: Dieterich'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. DM 8 at Zentralantiquariat, Leipzig, July, '95.

A very nicely done little book, with a touch of color on its cloth cover's design and on its spine. The version of the life used is, wisely, that published by Ben Edwin Perry from the tenth-century Manuscript 397 of the Pierpont Morgan Library. The introduction gives a good, balanced sense of how to read and analyze this life's elements and also offers a sense of the time in which Aesop lived. There is, besides the introduction (5) and "Zu dieser Ausgabe" comment at the end (133), a helpful short set of notes (136).

1974/76 Mes premières fables de la Fontaine. Images de Jacques Galan. Hardbound. Paris: belles histoires, belles images: Librairie Fernand Nathan et Cie. $9.90 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, Jan., '13.

This is a second, distinct, fable book in the same series as mes nouvelles fables de la Fontaine by the same artist and publisher in the same year. The pictures are cute. Both books are examples of the perduring tradition of La Fontaine. Fables presented here include GA, FC, OF, TMCM, WL, FS, LM, and "The Fox and the Goat." The cover is a mirror-opposite of one of the best illustrations, FC. The expression of the fox in FS is excellent as he starts to get the experience of having the tables turned.

1974/77 My Own Storybook. A Book of Stories and Poems. No editor acknowledged. Various illustrations, with no acknowledgement. (c)1974 Waverly House; (c)1977 Grolier Ltd. NY: Banner Press. $3 at Biermaier's, Minneapolis, March, '90.

A delightful collection from all sorts of sources, including Gerard Manley Hopkins. The fable section (135-9) features good choices from Lessing and Aesop, including the less known "The Lawyer and the Pears." There is a good two-tone illustration of "Four Oxen and the Lion." TT is on 113, with an illustration on 114.

1974/77 Tell Me a Tale: Stories, Songs and Things to Do. Jean Chapman. Illustrated by Deborah and Kilmeny Niland. Song Settings by Margaret Moore. Dust jacket. Hornsby, Australia: Hodder and Stoughton, in association with Brockhampton Press, England. Printed in Hong Kong. $6 at Booklegger's, Chicago, Sept., '90.

My first Australian book. Delightful activities follow on the stories: finger games, recipes, and songs. There are three fables: "Slow and Steady" (102), TMCM (106, based without acknowledgement on Jacobs' version), and TT (117). One nice touch in the last is that the tortoise never listens.

1974/81 Juan Ruiz: Arcipreste de Hita: Libro de Buen Amor II. Edición, Introducción y Notas de Jacques Joset. Segunda edición. Paperbound. Printed in Spain. Clásicos Castellanos 17. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A. $2.25 from The Book End, Monterey, CA, August, '94.

Espasa-Calpe did a new edition of Ruiz' important work with a new editor in 1974, Jacques Joset, again in two volumes. See my copies of their old edition under 1913/67. I have a copy of the 1974 first printing of the new second volume. See my comments there. Of the first volume, I have a copy of the third printing listed under 1974/84. It corresponds in format with this book. See also my comments on it. This book, as can be expected, has the second apparatus criticus above the first, the additional textual material after the finish at stanza 1728, the index of words and proper names, a T of C for both volumes, and advertisements for the Clásicos Castellanos series.

1974/82 Mes nouvelles fables de la Fontaine. Images de Jacques Galan. Paris: Librairie Fernand Nathan et Cie. Imprimé en Espagne. $4.50.

The pictures are cute. The La Fontaine text is the original verse. I see nothing for use. Of course, it is an example of the perduring tradition of LaFontaine. Fables presented here include TH, MM, "The Little Fish and the Fisherman," "The Coach and the Fly," "The Wolf, the Goat, and the Kid," and "The Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit."

1974/84 Juan Ruiz: Arcipreste de Hita: Libro de Buen Amor I. Edición, Introducción y Notas de Jacques Joset. Tercera edición. Paperbound. Printed in Spain. Clásicos Castellanos 14. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, S.A. $2.25 from The Book End, Monterey, CA, August, '94.

Espasa-Calpe did a new edition of Ruiz' important work with a new editor in 1974, Jacques Joset, again in two volumes. See my copies of their old edition under 1913/67. Of the new edition of 1974, I have a copy of the first printing, but only of the second volume. Here is my only copy--a third printing--of the first volume with Joset as editor. (See also 1974/81 for a corresponding second printing of the second volume.) The format is the same as in the 1913 edition, except that a second apparatus criticus seems to have been added above the first. Was perhaps a new manuscript discovered? We again have here the first 891 stanzas after an introduction. Following the text, there are only advertisements for the books in the Clásicos Castellanos series. For what I know about Libro de Buen Amor, see the translations done in 1933 by Kane and in 1970 by Mignani and Di Cesare.

1974/84 Wolf! Wolf! Elizabeth and Gerald Rose. London: Faber and Faber. First published in 1974; first published in paperback in 1984. $1.95 at Powell's in Chicago, May, '89.

A lively and colorful paperback. Jason shepherds goats. There is a happy ending: Jason beats the wolf with his crook and forces him over the cliff.

1974/85? Treasured Tales of Childhood: Fables & Nursery Rhymes. Put together by Barbara Simons and Ruth Rooney. Hardbound. Printed in USA. Nashville: Treasured Tales of Childhood: The Southwestern Company. $4.99 from Marie Bilodeau, Woonsocket, RI, through Ebay, Nov., '02. 

This book is apparently a reprint with new cover of the original edition done in 1974. There is no indication in either book that it is a later printing. The bibliographer is thus left to guess at the date of publication for this book. Let me repeat part of what I wrote there: "The seventh of eight sections of this book is given to reproducing—with some omissions—Anne Sellers Leaf's Aesop's Fables from Rand McNally in 1952. The omissions include 'The Cat, the Cock, and the Young Mouse,' GGE, and WS. The larger page format here allows illustrations and story to be spread out further. The editor cleverly cuts the boy going to shout 'Wolf!' in half; the reader has to turn the page to see the other half." With this volume I have included one other sent by the seller, Stories About Animals, which contains no fables.

1974/86 Favole di animali. Beniamino Bodini NA. Second edition, fourth printing. Paperbound. Milan: AMZ. $9 from Small World Books, Honeoye Falls, NY, through eBay, Sept., '11.

Twenty-eight years ago I found a book by the same publisher covering fewer fables but using the same illustrations. The publishing history is not easy. That book used a subtitle "Fiabe di la Fontaine, Fedro e Esopo." Its illustrations seem better printed. Its pages were larger. It was hardbound. Here there is not even a title-page. The first page announces five categories of fables: fox, mouse, and wolf, interrupted by TH and OF. That book harkened back to a 1960 copyright, which I incorrectly followed; it was published in 1980, and that printing was in 1982. (I also missed that!) This book claims a 1974 copyright and a 1986 printing. New fables here include: the vindictive horse; the man and the frozen serpent; the two mules; the eagle and the dung-beetle; LM; the fattened weasel; the mouse-generals (with a two-page illustration); TMCM; and LS. After all these years, I still enjoy Bodini's illustrations, especially his facial expressions. I am saddened that he receives no recognition here for his work.

1974/90/96 Fables choisies de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Jiri Trnka. Dust jacket. Imprimé en République slovaque. Première édition 1974 par Artia, Prague. (c)1974 Librairie Gründ pour l'édition française. (c)1990 Aventinum Nakladatelství s.r.o., Prague. Vingtième édition 1996 par Aventinum, Prague. 25000 Lire at Librairie Française in Turin, Sept, '97.

I hope no clever reader asks me to explain all those copyright dates! This edition seems to have dropped one of my favorite colored illustrations, the one which had been on the cover and dust jacket of the 1962 English edition. (This wolf still appears here in black-and-white on 57.) Again, black-and-white illustrations are intermixed with the colored pictures. See my notes also on the other earlier versions, in 1974 and (in English) 1974/85.

1974/2005 Le più belle favole di La Fontaine.  Tradizione: Renato Caporali.  Illustrazioni: Cinzia Ghigliano.  Nuova Edizione, first printing.  Dust-jacket.  Hardbound.  Florence: Pagine d'Oro:  Giunti Junior.  €10.89 from DEA Medagroup, Rome, through Amazon, Oct., '14.  

From an original titled "Fables Choisies."  First published in 1974.  This book of 120 pages has four pages of T of C at its back.  The "Pagine d'Oro" series may be marked either by the gilt page-edges or by  the four full-page colored pages framed in gold.  They are TH (16), BC (32), TT (96), and "The Mouse, the Rooster, and the Cat" (112).  Almost every story has a half-page black-and-white illustration.  Sometimes, as in DW (28-29), these are doubled.  A good example of their highly expressive character is the cat on 76 seizing two unwary younger mice.  Another is the title-page's rendition of 99's mouse for "The Mouse and the Oyster."  The book is unusual for having several blank pages between stories.  The dust-jacket has a strip ingeniously matching the strip on the end-papers.

1974? Les Fables de La Fontaine. Illustrées par Monique Gorde. Hardbound. Paris: Éditions Lito. $10.90 from Marie Gervais, St.-Urbain-Premier, Quebec, Canada, through eBay, Nov., '11.

This is my seventh book illustrated by Monique Gorde, and it seems distinct from the other six. Here are thirty-one fables illustrated on 78 pages in a large-format children's book 9" x 10½". As always, Gorde imbues her work with a good deal of humor. Is that the same slavering fox that she has shown elsewhere in FG (12)? The scene for "Le Laboureur et ses enfants" (26-27) is particularly well done: mother looks down from an oval portrait as dying father gestures with his finger to three sons who seem either non-challant or Mad-magazine non-comprehending! The laboring ox looks out of the corner of his eye at the expanding and soon to be bursting frog (28). Country mouse wears sunglasses on 39. A tear comes out of the cicada's eye in GA (46). The illustration for FWT is rather graphic (76-77)! Lito 44901.

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