Fables from Aesop

Hardcover, by Ennis Rees with illustrations by J.J. Grandville, published by Oxford University Press, NY, 1966. Dj has b/w illustrations on both panels. Publisher's statement: "Mr. Rees's version of the fables is complemented by the inclusion of many of the wood engravings that J.J. Granville made for an 1838 edition of La Fontaine's Fables,illustrations in which the animals of the stories are sharply characterized." Illustrations are b/w. Includes 187 fables (forty-two were previously published in Poems by Ennis Rees in 1964, six previously published in Arion 3). Publisher's statement: "The wit and vigor with which Ennis Rees retells these one hundred and eighty-seven traditional tales will appeal to readers young and old. As he says, "I have tried to re-create selected fables in verse for our time, and to do it in as lively a way as I could consistent with simplicity." Each age makes its own version of that body of anonymous lore that the ancients ascribed to "Aesop," of whom we know little beyond legend. According to tradition, he was a slave who lived in about the sixth century before Christ. In many instances, fables ascribed are surely kindred to fables of India and China, as well as to certain of the Brer Rabbit tales--all from that ocean of story that has encircled the globe since time immemorial...Mr. Rees's version of the fables is complemented by the inclusion of many of the wood engravings that J.J. Grandville made for an 1838 edition of La Fontaine's Fables, illustrations in which the animals of the stories are sharply characterized."