Aesop's Fables. With Preface by S[amuel] Croxall and upwards of One Hundred and Sixty Illustrations. AESOP IN WHOLLY UNRESTORED PUBLISHER'S BINDING

16mo., First Edition thus, with wood-engraved title-vignette and very numerous woodcut illustrations in the text, neat contemporary inscription in pencil on front free endpaper; original maroon diced cloth, boards with double frame border enclosing sprays and oval all in blind, backstrip tooled and lettered in gilt, yellow endpapers, covers very lightly age-marked else a remarkably well-preserved bright, clean copy. A delightful copy of a mid-Victorian children's standard in original period binding. Samuel Croxall (d.1752), prolific author and translator, was educated at Eton and St. John's Cambridge, served as vicar of St. Mary Somerset and St. Mary Mounthaw London from 1731 to 1752, and was latterly appointed archdeacon at Hereford. His works include a translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1717) and a somewhat bawdy adaptation of the Song of Solomon (1720), but is for his lively rendering of Aesop's Fables that he is best remembered. First published in 1722, Croxall's 'Aesop' quickly became a standard version in English, many times reprinted and successively augmented throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Each of the one hundred and ten fables retold here is prefaced by a delightful woodcut and followed by a substantial 'Application' making explicit the moral of the allegory (eg. 'The Lark and her Young Ones' is construed as 'never depend on the assistance of friends and relations in anything you are able to do yourself'). The lively woodcuts are remarkable achievements and certainly not the least reason for the work's sustained popularity. It is notable that Bewick himself was 'extremely fond' of Croxall's work: 'I could not help regretting that I had not published a Book similar to 'Croxall's Esops Fables' as I had always intended to do' (Bain, I, p.49). In 1818 he completed 'Fables of Aesop and Others', his last published work, and his designs show the extent to which Croxall was a direct and powerful influence.