8vo. [2], vi, [2], 97pp. With a half-title and 20 designs by Robert Cruikshank, including an engraved frontispiece, eight engraved plates, and several further in-text illustrations. Original publisher's grey paper boards, with original paper lettering-piece to upper board, later naively rebacked in cloth. Rubbed and marked, with small losses to head and foot of spine, surface wear to lettering-piece. Armorial bookplate of Lieut. General Robert Meade and book-label of J. O. Edwards to FEP. Leaves lightly browned, light scattered spotting.

The sole edition of a collection of fables by British journalist Charles Molloy Westmacott (1787/8-1868), editor of The Age, the most popular household paper of the 1830s. Frequently attacked with accusations of 'gossip-mongering', in part due to his documented acceptance of bribes in exchange for the suppression of unsavoury articles, Westmacott's connections to the art world allowed for collaborations with Britain's pre-eminent caricaturists, among them Robert Cruikshank and Thomas Rowlandson. Alongside this volume, Cruikshank and Westmacott would co-produce the editor's most successful work, The English Spy (1825/26), published under his intermittent pseudonym, Bernard Blackmantle.