Fables of Aesop and Others: Translated into English with Instructive Applications and a Cut Before Each Fable. A New Edition, Improved

London: Printed for A. Millar, W. Law...[et al.], 1792 A rare edition of a text that was first published in 1722. It went through numerous editions and was expanded several times during the eighteenth century. The charming woodcut illustrations are unsigned, as is the frontispiece. This edition is recorded in one copy only, at Harvard. There is no copy in England. STC notes: "The London part of the imprint is fake, probably printed at York. Contemporary tree sheep. . Twelvemo. With an engraved frontispiece and 196 woodcuts in the text, one to accompany each fable. Binding extremities lightly rubbed, some superficial cracks in spine. Several ownership notations on front endpapers, one dated 1823. A very good, attractive copy. Samuel Croxall (1688/9-1752) was a Church of England clergyman, educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. His first publications were anti-tory satires, purporting to be original cantos of Spenser, 1713-14. Several other whig celebratory poems followed. Croxall translated book 6 and parts of four other books of Ovid's Metamorphoses (1717), edited by Samuel Garth; his contribution was second only to Dryden in bulk, and he went on to produce other poems and translations, and to edit other works throughout his life. His Aesop and Others "was a work of morality and whiggish politics which enjoyed reprints until well into the twentieth century and must be reckoned Croxall's most successful publication. It was one of the first books to influence the poet Robert Browning"(Oxford DNB).