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 Nezi- which which charmingly capture La Fontaine-s unforgettable cast of animal personalities.