Thomas Bewick & the Fables of Aesop

Title

en_US Thomas Bewick & the Fables of Aesop

en_US The Book Club of California Publication #175

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US Limited edition of 518 copies

en_US Biographical Sketch by John W. Borden; History of the Fables by Janet S. Krueger

Creator

en_US Borden, John W.

Contributor

en_US Bewick, Thomas

Date

2016-01-25T19:59:38Z

en_US 2008-08

en_US 1983

Date Available

2016-01-25T19:59:38Z

Date Issued

en_US 1983

Abstract

en_US With an original leaf from the first edition (1818) of 'The Fables of Aesop' and a new impression from one of Bewick's original wood engravings. I had looked for an inexpensive copy of this book for a long time. This copy includes not only a very nice printing of one of my favorite woodcuts from Bewick, Industry and Sloth from page 9 of the 1818 version, but also the introduction to that edition, pages ix to xvi. Borden writes a helpful biographical sketch. Bewick was a natural-born drawer and fell in love with drawing on wood. His tail-pieces (he called them tale-pieces) in particular express his love for English countryside and his keen eye for a scene. The Fables of Aesop and Others was not as well received as Bewick's previous books on quadrupeds (1790), land birds (1797), and ocean birds (1804). Borden mentions twice that Bewick wrote that this fable book was not so well printed as I expected and wished (24). The woodblock printed anew in this publication is the last of the fables, The Boys and the Frogs. Krueger mentions England's love for fables in the eighteenth century -- Grimm's Fairy Tales in 1823 would be one cause of a change in that predilection -- and claims that it would be hard to find another illustrator of books, either before or after Bewick's time, who devoted so much of his working life to this literary genre (34). Bewick was both designer and engraver; neither Dürer nor Holbein had cut his own blocks. Bewick brought the woodcut to a level beyond what people had assigned it to, namely crude chapbooks. Bewick followed Locke in trying to make education pleasant. He balanced the heavy learning of his books with the wit and fun of the tail-pieces. His Fables of Aesop and Others was an attempt to improve upon Croxall's illustrations, and he did that. Krueger, who may overquote experts in art history, fortunately follows the fate of the blocks themselves and has good things to say about Bewick's transformation of Croxall's texts and about his tail-pieces.

Identifier

en_US 6885 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/82190

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US The Book Club of California

en_US San Francisco

Subject

en_US NE1147.6.B47 B67 1983

en_US Aesop

en_US Title Page Scanned

Type

en_US Book, Whole