NUMEROUS AUTHORS AND EDITIONS
OF
REINEKE FUCHS.
(REYNARD THE FOX.)
The real origin of this very curious comic and satirical production is involved, like most fables of the kind, in considerable doubt and perplexity. The earliest printed German copy would appear to have been that of the year 1498, written in the dialect of Lower Saxony; though there was a Dutch romance, in prose, bearing the same title, “Historie van Reynaert de Vos,” published at Delft, in 1485. The former one, of 1498, was afterwards translated into High German, and also into Latin. It has been referred to various individuals as the author; most commonly to Henry Von Alkmar; but that his was not the first story of the kind, would appear from his preface, in which he merely assumes the merit of its translation. Nicholas Baumann, who is stated to have written it as a satire upon the chancellor of the duke of Juliers, is another author to whom it has, with less authority however, been attributed, his edition bearing no earlier a date than 1522. In the translation it is stated to have been
