Fifty-One Original Fables with Morals and Ethical Index. Also a Translation of Plutarch's Banquet of the Seven Sages. (Spine: Original Fables)

Title
en_US Fifty-One Original Fables with Morals and Ethical Index. Also a Translation of Plutarch's Banquet of the Seven Sages. (Spine: Original Fables)
Description
en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)
en_US First edition
en_US (Monogram=) Job Crithannah (Jonathan Birch)
Creator
en_US Birch, J.
Contributor
en_US Cruikshank, Robert
Date
2016-01-25T20:10:46Z
en_US 2011-11
en_US 1833
Date Available
2016-01-25T20:10:46Z
Date Issued
en_US 1833
Abstract
en_US I already have two copies of this fine book: from Adams Avenue Book Store in San Diego and from June Clinton. Here is a third copy. I will keep all three in the collection because they are differently bound and have different qualities. I am trying now to make a separate entry for every book in the collection; thus this book has its own new ID number. This copy may be the cleanest and best preserved of the three. It has the stamp of the Due of Orleans on its title-page. Leather corners and spine. Ornamentally painted endpapers and foredges. As I have written of the other two copies, after an introduction, the book begins with an Ethical Index, listing titles and morals. A new fable comes every four pages. First there is an illustration about 2½ x 3½ in size centered on the left-hand page. Then come, on the next two pages, number, title, narrative, moral (usually longer than the narrative), and perhaps a vignette. A blank right-hand page follows. The Cruickshank illustrations are often very nice. An example is the illustration for Fable VI, The Bee, the Spider, and the Tomtit (42). In the fable, the Tomtit overhears the other two arguing about their building skills, especially relative to their mathematical skills in constructing hive and web, respectively. The Tomtit intrudes himself to praise his nests, and the other bursts into laughter. The illustration is wonderfully precise. Many of the vignettes are delightful; a good example is that for Aesop and the Libertine (48). Another vignette has a man reeling from a woman who has removed her make-up mask (68). One might take this book as a sample of the taste of the Eighteenth Century. The long morals regularly take up social, political, and religious questions. We read, e.g., a tribute on 52 to public schools over private tuition, for in the former the boy, surrounded by his equals, soon finds out the necessity of curbing passion and suppressing sauciness. The Hog and the Goat (59) focuses on misplaced admiration of either obesity or starvation. For yet another example of the taste of the time, try The Traveller and the Gnat (119). One of these new fables that I find particularly engaging is The Yard-Dog and the Fox (99). The fox lures the over-zealous watchdog into the woods and then doubles back to plunder the farm. The fable has a good illustration and a good vignette. Many of the fables suffer, I believe, from a sort of prethought didacticism. This R. Cruickshank apparently has nothing to do with the famous George Cruickshank, who lived from 1792 to 1878 and illustrated The Toothache. There is an AI at the back, which also lists the engraver for each illustration. It is followed by a translation of Plutarch's The Banquet of the Seven Sages.
Identifier
en_US Bodemann identifier 278.1
en_US 7611 (Access ID)
uri
http://hdl.handle.net/10504/82873
Language
en_US eng
Publisher
en_US Hamilton Adams, and co.,
en_US London
Subject
en_US PN982.B57 1833
en_US Title Page Scanned
Type
en_US Book, Whole
Item sets
Carlson Fable Collection Books