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A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine

First published: 1900
Pages: 223

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About this book

Jean de La Fontaine gathered these short animal tales from Aesop, ancient India, and the folklore of his own day, then recast them in taut French verse. This selection collects a hundred of them, from the ant that refuses to feed the idle grasshopper through winter to the slender reed that bends before the storm the proud oak cannot survive. Each fable sets a brisk drama among beasts and men, then closes on a plain moral, though the wit often cuts sharper than the lesson admits. Written under Louis XIV, the poems mock vanity, greed, and courtly ambition behind their gentle surface. This English edition, first issued in 1900 with Percy J. Billinghurst's line drawings, remains one of the most enduring ways into a poet whom French schoolchildren still learn by heart.

About the author

Jean de La Fontaine

Jean de La Fontaine (1621–1695) was a French poet of the classical age, remembered above all for his Fables, published in twelve books between 1668 and 1694. Drawing on Aesop and older Eastern collections, he turned moral tales into elegant verse that quietly satirized human folly and the manners of Louis XIV's court.

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