Aesop's Fables Aesop and Others, newly done into English with an Application to each Fable". First published in 1722, with engravings by Elisha Kirkall for each fable, it was continuously reprinted into the second half of the 19th century. Another popular collection was John Newbery's "Fables in Verse for the Improvement of the Young and the Old", facetiously attributed to Abraham Aesop Esquire, which was to see ten editions after its first publication in 1757. Robert Dodsley's three-volume "Select Fables of Esop and other Fabulists" is distinguished for several reasons. First that it was printed in Birmingham by John Baskerville in 1761;
Aesop's Fables adapted to the Seychelles dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983. Jean-Louis Robert's recent translation of Babrius into Réunion creole (2007) adds a further motive for such adaptation. Fables began as an expression of the slave culture and their background is in the simplicity of agrarian life. Creole transmits this experience with greater purity than the urbane language of the slave-owner. Fables belong essentially to the oral tradition; they survive by being remembered and then retold in one's own words. When they are written down, particularly in the dominant language of instruction, they lose