Published in London in 1775, this retelling of The History of Reynard the Fox is widely considered by scholars to be the first English-language version of the story to be written explicitly for children. It contains all of the main incidents associated with the adult version - the many deceits and misadventures of Reynard in the court of King Noble the lion, and how he (Reynard) harmed the other animals and came out triumphant - but it also includes a number of other features intended to make it suitable for use with children. These include moral messages in rhyme, attached to each chapter; the use of illustration and table to make things more comprehensible for young listeners and readers; and an introduction that speaks directly to children, saying: "Attend, ye youths, of infant mold, / To what the following sheets unfold! / And let each little rip'ning maid, / Con o'ver the moral here display'd."

The frontispiece here, which depicts a father with a book in his lap, speaking to his three children as a fox runs off with a goose in the background, is paired with a caption that makes plain the intended audience: "The Father to each Child explains / the Jokes our merry book contains / Their little tongues are always running / On Daddy's Sense and Fox's Cunning." There is also a visual index of characters at the front of the book, identifying the name, image and species of the animals who appear in the story. These features make it plain who the intended readers are, while other passages from the introduction clarify how the book is to be interpreted by those readers: "Pray don't imagine, little readers, / We in the Fox's cause are pleaders; / Too well we know his subtle ways, / To give the wily culprit praise; / So print his various pranks to shew, / What Foxes on two legs may do; / To warn ye not to treat with such / As act their cunning over-much."

This was a fun little book to read, and the first text that I read, during the course of my research while writing my masters dissertation on three centuries of Reynard retellings for children in the Anglophone world, that had direct relevance for my topic. Recommended to anyone curious about the first children's Reynard in English, or interested in 18th-century English children's literature in general. ( )