The fables of Æsop, selected, told anew and their history traced

The Fables of Æsop, Selected, Told Anew and Their History Traced – is a book, which was published in 1894 and written by Joseph Jacobs. He was an English literary critic, folklorist, historian, statistician and public figure of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was also considered one of the best English folklorists. It is difficult to say what Aesop's Fables are and what is not. Almost all the fables that have appeared in the Western world have, at one time or another, taken refuge under the shadow of this name. The author has tried to bring most of them on the following pages. What we call his fables in most cases goes back to the fables of other people, especially Phaedrus and Babrius. It is generally believed that the collections of Greek prose, which were held under the name of Aesop, have great rights to the title of the same name; but modern research has shown that these are only medieval transcriptions of Babrius's poems. Therefore, the author decided to retell the fable in a way that would be interesting to children, and took from various versions what seemed most appropriate in each particular case, retelling the fable anew in his own way. Jacobs also appended to the "Fables" in small print at the end a series of notes summarizing what is known about the origin of each fable. In this book, the author again tried to present in a shorter and more readable form the results of his research in the volume.