Fables of La Fontaine.
Jean de La Fontaine · Volume 1
Twenty-five of La Fontaine's most iconic fables in the original seventeenth-century verse, glossed word by word — with Grandville's legendary engravings and an epilogue after every fable.
106 pages · Paperback & Kindle · Intermediate
— the opening of “La Cigale et la Fourmi” (The Cicada and the Ant)
Twenty-five fables in verse.
Classical French poetry in its original structure, with guided analysis throughout.
La Fontaine is the music of the French language at its most concentrated: witty, economical verse that every French schoolchild grows up reciting. This volume gathers twenty-five of the most iconic fables — from La Cigale et la Fourmi to Les Compagnons d'Ulysse — in their original seventeenth-century verse, updated only for modern legibility.
A strictly literal gloss sits beneath each word, preserving La Fontaine's syntax so you experience the poetry's actual construction rather than a smoothed paraphrase. Every fable is followed by an original English epilogue that unpacks the moral and connects it to the present, and the volume carries eleven full-page engravings by J.-J. Grandville from the celebrated 1838 Hachette edition.
- 01La Cigale et la FourmiThe Cicada and the Ant — the most quoted fable in French
- 02Les Compagnons d'UlysseThe Companions of Ulysses
- 03Twenty-three more classicsThe best-known fables of the seventeenth-century master
- 04Grandville engravingsEleven full-page plates from the 1838 Hachette edition
- 05EpiloguesAn original English commentary after every fable
Why this edition.
Verse, made readable
Poetry is the hardest register to read in a foreign language. The word-by-word gloss carries you through La Fontaine's inversions and archaisms without flattening them.
The originals, legible
The seventeenth-century French is preserved — poetic structure intact — and updated only where modern legibility demands it.
A beautiful object
Grandville's 1838 engravings give the volume the feel of the classic editions these fables have always deserved.
— the first four verses of “La Cigale et la Fourmi” — the glosses preserve the verse lines
The details.
- Series
- The French Reader
- Language pair
- French–English interlinear
- Format
- Paperback & Kindle
- Print length
- 106 pages
- Illustrations
- J.-J. Grandville (1838 Hachette edition)
- Level
- Intermediate (B1–B2)
- Published
- May 2026
- ASIN
- B0GX2V58B1
More in French.
Every edition is glossed by hand, word by word, and printed on demand by Amazon.
Read Fables of La Fontaine with every word translated beneath the original.
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