Fables

Seventeenth-century Frenchman Jean de La Fontaine happily plundered Aesop and other classical writers as a source for his witty elegant fables as well as inventing a number of his own. Seeking to expose the weaknesses of human nature he offered vivid perspectives on greed and flattery envy and avarice love and friendship old age and death. The sixty fables collected here – from The Crow and the Fox and The Cock and the Pearl to The Grasshopper and the Ant and The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse – are illustrated with more than a hundred drawings by R. de La Nezière which which charmingly capture La Fontaine’s unforgettable cast of animal personalities.