About this Item
Aesop's Fables. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1909. Limited to 750 copies signed by Edward J. Detmold, of which this is #532. Twenty-five full page color tipped-in plates by Detmold with lettered tissue guards. A masterpiece of illustration, and widely regarded as Detmold's finest work. 10 inches by 12 inches. Bound in vibrant red morocco by Bayntun/Riviere with Detmold's hare vividly inlaid on the front cover, and multiple gilt borders to front and back covers. Gilt-tooled turn-ins and marbled endpapers. Housed in somewhat worn buckram slipcase. Spine darkened and some light spots of rubbing. 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. Manuscripts in Latin and Greek were important avenues of transmission, although poetical treatments in European vernaculars eventually formed another. On the arrival of printing, collections of Aesop's fables were among the earliest books in a variety of languages. Through the means of later collections, and translations or adaptations of them, Aesop's reputation as a fabulist was transmitted throughout the world. Edward Julius Detmold and his twin brother Charles Maurice Detmold were prolific Victorian book illustrators. Edward Detmold became one of the most talented of illustrators, depicting animals and plants with an extraordinary understanding, and making use of fantasy settings of architecture and landscape. In the 1920s, he retired to Montgomeryshire with his widowed sister as companion, initially living the life of an artist but finally retiring completely from public life. He suffered a period of depression, brought on by failing eyesight, that resulted in his committing suicide, aged 73, by his shooting himself in the chest in July 1957.
Seller Inventory # 025612
Contact seller
Report this item
