For more than two thousand years, the fables of the Greek slave known as Aesop have entertained readers with their wise reflections on human nature and their insightful "morals," which have become some of the wittiest aphorisms in all literature. What reader is not familiar with the phrases "Might makes right," "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," "Beauty is skin deep," "Slow and steady wins the race," or "Look before you leap"?
Many of these charming fables are literary classics that have become a part of our common cultural vocabulary. The mere mention of their titles evokes their story and the lesson they impart: "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," "The Hare and the Tortoise," "The City Mouse and the Country Mouse," "The Dog in the Manger," "The Fox and the Grapes."
This edition of Aesop's Fables features more than 300 selections passed down through the ages and enriched with each new telling. Drawn from the classic compilations of fabulists Roger L'Estrange, Jean La Fontaine, and Samuel Croxall, they represent the refinement of the fables as they have been told for more than two centuries.
This volume is lavishly illustrated with more than 130 drawings, sketches, and full-page engravings by Ernest Griset, the nineteenth-century illustrator whose unparalleled talent for sketching animal figures endowed with human features and mannerisms helped to universalize the fables for generations of readers.
Part fairytale, part fantasy, part moral parable, each of these fables is a polished gem of storytelling craft whose luster never dulls. Readers young and old will delight in these timeless fables whose human and animal characters hold up an enchanted mirror in which we see ourselves.
