p.B. J. Whiting savors proverbial expressions and has devoted much of his lifetime to studying and collecting them; no one knows more about British and American proverbs than he. The present volume, based upon writings in British North America from the earliest settlements to approximately 1820, complements his and Archer Taylor's Dictionary of American Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, 1820-1880. It differs from that work and from other standard collections, however, in that its sources are primarily not "literary" but instead workaday writings - letters, diaries, histories, travel books, political pamphlets, and the like. The authors represent a wide cross-section of the populace, from scholars and statesmen to farmers, shopkeepers, sailors, and hunters. Mr. Whiting has combed all the obvious sources and hundreds of out-of-the-way publications of local journals and historical societies. This body of material, "because it covers territory that has not been extracted and compiled in a scholarly way before, can justly be said to be the most valuable of all those that Whiting has brought together," according to Albert B. Friedman. "What makes the work important is Whiting's authority: a proverb or proverbial phrase is what BJW thinks is a proverb or proverbial phrase. There is no objective operative definition of any value, no divining rod; his tact, 'feel, ' experience, determine what's the real thing and what is spurious."

Reproduced pages of the original 17th-century Yiddish, including the woodcuts, face the first English translation of the 34 fables that comprise Wallich's Sefer Mesholim. A valuable resource for students of the Yiddish language and of European Jewish culture of the early modern period. The fables come mostly from Aesop and medieval Hebrew and German sources. Well annotated. No index. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This carefully crafted ebook: "Aesop's Fables" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Contents: The Wolf and the Kid The Tortoise and the Ducks The Young Crab and His Mother The Frogs and the Ox The Dog, the Cock, and the Fox Belling the Cat The Eagle and the Jackdaw The Boy and the Filberts Hercules and the Wagoner The Kid and the Wolf The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse The Fox and the Grapes The Bundle of Sticks The Wolf and the Crane The Ass and His Driver The Oxen and the Wheels The Lion and the Mouse The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf The Gnat and the Bull The Plane Tree The Farmer and the Stork The Sheep and the Pig The Travelers and the Purse The Lion and the Ass The Frogs Who Wished for a King The Owl and the Grasshopper A Raven and a Swan The Two Goats The Monkey and the Camel…