CAUTIONARY VERSES

This volume contains all of the old favorites over which Hilaire Belloc's admirers have been chuckling since the end of the 19th century-and the original illustrations by B.T.B. and Nicolas Bentley. It also contains many later verses in the same sly vein. Here you meet again the Horrible Examples (old favorites if you are very fortunate): Matilda, who told lies and was Burned to Death; Sarah Byng, who could not read and was tossed into a Thorny Hedge by a Bull; Lord Henry Chase, who got into a Libel Case; and the curiously instructive beasts who range from microbes to frozen mammoths, all of them inhabiting Mr. Belloc's private zoological park. The republicationof these verses in one handsome volume is cause for rejoicing, especially among wise children, who will judge this edition of Cautionary Verses to be the ideal book for the education and edification of their parents.

HILAIRE BELLOC was born near Paris in 1870 and raised in England, though he remained a French citizen until 1902. He attended Baillol College in Oxford. His most famous works were his humorous morality poems and cautionary tales for children. After the loss of his son in World War I he wrote a series of historical biographies and religious texts, reaffirming his Roman Catholic faith. He died in 1953.