Excerpt from Fifty Fables The universal use of La Fontaine's Fables in education, both in France and elsewhere, and the frequency of refer ences to them in French literature, render unnecessary any apology for this book. The editor has tried to supply what he has long felt to be urgently needed, a convenient and suitable selection of the Fables, edited in a scholarly manner with English annotation. The fifty here given, including nearly all the best known ones, and a few that are less familiar, will be as many as most classes care to read. Those who wish to devote further study to the Fables should have a complete edition, such as that of Regnier or of Clement (see Introduction, p. Regnier is here followed as to text and punctuation, except that the names of animals are not capitalized, and that a few words have been modernized; -ot't and -01'ent in verb endings are changed to -ait and - aie7zt; other changes are indicated in the notes. The editor hereby expresses his obligation to the two editions mentioned above, as well as to the other works referred to in the Introduction; Edgren and Burnet's french-english Dictionary has been useful in suggesting English renderings. The vocabulary is in tended to include every word in the text (including the Appendix, and quotations in the notes). Idiomatic phrases are to be sought in the Vocabulary, and translations are avoided in the notes. Perfect consistency has sometimes been sacrificed to convenience. Such information as seems. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.