(London: Printed by R. Sare, T. Sawbridge, et al., 1692).

THE SCARCE FIRST EDITION OF PERHAPS THE MOST POPULAR VERSION OF AESOP’S FABLES YET PRINTED. Roger L"Estrange’s vital and vigorous telling of these stories has been reprinted extensively right up to this very day, it was the version chosen by the Golden Cockerel Press for their beautiful edition and by Everyman’s Library as “the standard”.
L’Estrange (1616-1704) was primarily a Tory journalist, pamphleteer and a surveyor of printing presses and licenser of the press under Charles II and James II. Those duties did not however prevent him from also being a prolific writer and translator. His translation of Aesop was extremely popular in its own day, though not without some critics. Some of his contemporaries accused the work of Jacobite tendencies and of being overly politicalized. Those criticisms seem to have stood up far less well to the test of time then the work itself has, its near constant state of reprinting over the centuries to follow is a testament to its timeless appeal and popularity. Item #29817

First edition of Roger L’Estrange’s version of Aesop. Engraved frontispiece portrait of L’Estrange by Roger White after Geoffrey Kneller and a full page engraving of Aesop surrounded by the animal subjects of his stories. Folio in fours, (318 x 200mm.), handsomely bound in full paneled calf of the period, the spine with raised bands bordered with double fillet ruled panels in blind, original endleaves. [viii], 1-28, [8], 480. A pleasing and unpressed, quite clean copy of the book. Both the portrait engraving and the Aesop engraving in good order and well preserved. The original binding still handsome, authentic and well preserved.