Sir Roger L'Estrange FABLES OF AESOP AND OTHER EMINENT MYTHOLOGISTS WITH MORALS AND REFLECTIONS c1890 Facsimile Reprint of 1664 Edition Leatherbound Gilt & Marbled Endpapers Myth Childrens Stories Ethical Guides Morality Culture

Title: Fables, of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists: With Morals and Reflections
Author: Aesop - Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. In many of the tales, animals speak and have human characteristics.

Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. A later tradition (dating from the Middle Ages) depicts Aesop as a black Ethiopian. Depictions of Aesop in popular culture over the last 2500 years have included several works of art and his appearance as a character in numerous books, films, plays, and television programs., Sir Roger L'Estrange - Sir Roger L'Estrange was an English pamphleteer, author and staunch defender of Royalist claims. L'Estrange was involved in political controversy throughout his life. Perhaps his best known polemical pamphlet was "An Account of the Growth of Knavery," which ruthlessly attacked the parliamentary opposition, placing them as "dissenting fanatics" and truly beyond the pale.

He published translations of Seneca the Younger's "Morals" and Cicero's "Offices," besides his master-work of this period, "Fables of Aesop and Other Eminent Mythologists" (1692). This notably included nearly all of the "Hecatomythium" of Laurentius Abstemius, among several other fabulists. The style is racily idiomatic and each fable is accompanied by a short moral and a longer reflection, which set the format for fable collections for the next century (Information courtesy of Wikipedia)

Publisher: Reprinted and Published by W. H. Allen and Co.
City: London
Year: c1890
Printing Information: Other - see description
Binding Style: Hardcover
Pagination: 476 pages
Width: 7.5" Height: 12"
Book Details: Bound in full leather, this antique title features gilt tooling to the boards and spine, as well as full-edge gilt. This c1890 facsimile reprint of the 1664 edition has a detailed engraved frontispiece and an alphabetical table of the fables contained in the volume.

Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.

The fables originally belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him, although some of that material was from sources earlier than him or came from beyond the Greek cultural sphere. The process of inclusion has continued until the present, with some of the fables unrecorded before the later Middle Ages and others arriving from outside Europe. The process is continuous and new stories are still being added to the Aesop corpus, even when they are demonstrably more recent work and sometimes from known authors. Initially the fables were addressed to adults and covered religious, social and political themes. They were also put to use as ethical guides and from the Renaissance onwards were particularly used for the education of children. Their ethical dimension was reinforced in the adult world through depiction in sculpture, painting and other illustrative means, as well as adaptation to drama and song. In addition, there have been reinterpretations of the meaning of fables and changes in emphasis over time.
Condition / Notes: This antique volume displays some moderate indications of age and wear, including detached and partially cracked boards and a mostly lacking spine. The boards show significant rubbing. The text and frontispiece remain clear and crisp through mild age toning/foxing.

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