xxiv, 376 pp. Illustrated with hundreds of wood engravings by Thomas Bewick. Inserted "receipt" with facsimile thumbprint and signature bound before title-page. Extra-illustrated with four original drawings by Thomas Bewick. The original drawings face pages 44, 206, 216, and 230 and are the pencil sketches for the tail-pieces on those pages (about the same size and all in mirror-image besides the one at p.44) and with small page numbers. They are mounted to show both sides of the paper, the versos with some printer's markings. The first and second drawings are signed in ink "T.B.". Imperial Octavo, 9¾x5¾, full black morocco elaborately gilt, turn-ins and edges gilt, by Zaehnsdorf. First Bewick Edition (the "Thumbprint Edition"), Large-Paper Issue.

Important copy of Bewick's most-beloved book, in fine condition with deluxe binding, the preferred large-format issue, and extra-illustrated with four original drawings. Thomas Bewick is "justly styled the restorer of wood engraving in England" (DNB) and Aesop's Fables is his masterwork. He wrote of his inspiration to illustrate this work when he thought he was dying: "While I lay helpless from weakness, and pined to a skeleton, without any hopes of recovery being entertained by myself or anyone else, I became, as it were, all mind and memory...I could not...help regretting that I had not published a book similar to Croxall's Aesop's Fables, as I had always intended to do. I was extremely fond of that book; and, as it afforded me much pleasure, I thought, with better executed designs, it would impart the same kind of delight to others as I had experienced..." (quoted in the 1975 reprint, p.[7]). V&A 27.