Aesop's Fables with His Life: in English, French & Latin , Gift of Ruth J. Heffelfinger, 1974 , PML 64797
Aesop and the Animals
Although Aesop is credited with many of the fables that are still known today—The Tortoise and the Hare, for example—no writings directly from the Greek storyteller's hand survive. This legendary edition of the fables was lavishly illustrated by Francis Barlow, one of the most accomplished animal and bird painters in seventeenth-century England. The left-hand page of the book depicts Aesop among the animals, his closeness to them confirming his reputation as the best interpreter of their thoughts and motivations: "See here how Nature's Book unclasped lies / Whose pages Aesop reads with pearcing eyes."