Aesop’s Fables

The collected animal fables attributed to Aesop, a figure who may or may not have existed — several hundred very short stories, each carrying a moral.

Context: Transmitted orally for centuries before being written down, and the origin of a surprising share of everyday English idiom. Page count reflects the Oxford World’s Classics edition; these texts vary widely by edition and translation.

Why it’s on the list: The source layer under a large amount of borrowed business wisdom — worth reading directly rather than through the people who quote it.

Where I saw it: Thread of Classics — a crowd-sourced Twitter thread pairing classic texts with the people recommending them. Put forward by Robert Haisfield (tweet).

Connections

• Thread of Classics — the reading list it came from