With their unique blend of wit and poetic mastery, the verse interpretations of Aesop’s Fables by 17th-century author Jean de La Fontaine have enchanted readers of all ages for over three centuries. 70 popular and oft-quoted fables appear here, including "The Grasshopper and the Ant," "The Town Rat and the Country Rat," "The Fox and the Grapes," "The Hare and the Tortoise," and dozens more. A classic of French literature; brilliantly translated by Walter Thornbury into English verse.

La Fontaine's witty and sophisticated animal fables are among the greatest poetic works in French. Christopher Betts's new translations match the inventiveness of the original. This generous selection, including half of the originals, is accompanied by superb illustrations by Gustave Doré, a contextualizing introduction and other features.

In this wonderful, vigorously contemporary translation, Craig Hill has captured the liveliness, satiric wit, and poetic beauty that made Jean de la Fontaine famous during his lifetime and his Fables celebrated as a masterwork of world literature ever since. Despite la Fontaine’s deceptively modest claim that all he intended was to put the moral tales of Aesop and other ancient fabulists into poetry for the pleasure of Louis XIV’s young son, his real accomplishment, as later generations have understood, was holding a mirror up to the society of his day and, in the process, fashioning a work that has become a classic. Borrowing from a variety of sources, la Fontaine gave the hitherto mute animals in ancient fables the power of speech. Backstabbing politicians, brainless nincompoops, charlatans, clueless heads of state, egomaniacs, empty-headed celebrities, foolish investors, gluttons, liars, penny–pinchers, self-important blowhards, and wastrels—these are the targets of la Fontaine’s pen. In this beautifully bound collector’s edition, Craig Hill has given us a rare treat: both the irreverent spirit and the vivid poetry that have made la Fontaine’s fables beloved through the ages, continuing to amuse and inspire centuries after they ?rst appeared in print.

Though they were first written over 300 years ago, this is the first complete English translation of Jean de La Fontaine's comedic classic Contes et nouvelles en vers. Both sexually charged and wickedly funny, La Fontaine's Tales will surprise readers who know him only from his work on fables for children. Though the writing is more suggestive than vulgar, it still has the power to shock readers unprepared for the darkness that inhabits these poems. Included are nearly seventy illustrations dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, many of them rare, as well as extensive commentary by the editor.