Рыбьи Пляски [в] Сын отечества: исторический, политический и литературный журнал, Номер XXVII.

Published in an influential periodical, this, the first publication of Krylov's fable, was corrected by the author himself. a fresh example.

The work appears on pp. 33-35 with the following note 'This fable was printed in Sorevnovatel' prosvesheniya, No. 7 of this year, with admissions and mistakes. It is found here with corrections, according to the wishes of the esteemed author. Ed.'

Ivan Krylov (1769-1844) is Russia's best known fabulist. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesop's and La Fontaine's, later fables were original work, often satirising the incompetent bureaucracy that stifled social progress in his time.

The Son of the Fatherland was established by Nikolai Grech in St Petersburg in September 1812. Defending liberal views in its first decade, it became a leading intellectual and highly influential journal of the Golden Age until its closure 40 years later. As well as a wide range of literary and news, this specific issue is also devoted to the latest sensational scientific discovery of the time the deciphering of Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs by the French scholar Jean-Francois Champollion (1790-1832).