La Fontaine, Jean de

New York. 1982. Penguin Books. Reprinted Penguin Classic Paperback Edition. A Few Instances of Yellow Highlighting Inside, Otherwise Very Good in Wrappers. 0140443762. Translated from the French by James Michie. Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. 142 pages. paperback. The cover shows The Fox and the Stork by Jean-Baptiste Oudry in the Musee National de Versailles (Photo: Giraudon). keywords: Literature France Translated Fables. FROM THE PUBLISHER - Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95) is celebrated for his charm, his absent-mindedness and, above all, his wonderful books of fables. Plundering Aesop, Phaedrus, Bidpai and the Persians, Italians and French, he reinvented the fable in a verse full of irresistible brio and freshness. His tales of speaking animals are always rooted firmly in the human world, and collectively they represent one of the high points of European civilization, achieving, over three centuries, an almost proverbial familiarity. ‘How inquisitive La Fontaine was, how indefatigable . . transforming the familiar and the instructive into poems replete with his grace, his wit, his gaiety, his melancholy, his taste for the classics, or the classic myths, his amused experience of life, low, high and medium' - from the Introduction by Geoffrey Grigson. inventory #20891 ISBN: 0140443762.