Barlow's edition of Aesop was published by William Godbid in 1666. Few copies of the first edition remain, as many of them were destroyed (along with the printer's premises) in the Great Fire of London the same year the edition was published. Some OCLC records bear dates of 1801 or 1802 for this same edition, though the date on the title-page is "an X," i.e., 1810. The illustrations are copied from the original images by Barlow, which were first published in 1666. This attractive edition of Aesop features the stories retold for the "amusement and instruction of the youth." OCLC records only five copies of this Tardieu edition. Barlow is known as the father of British sporting painting. "He was furthermore a pioneer in the history of comics by creating A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish Plot (c. 1682), a picture story about the life of Titus Oates and the Popish Plot, which is told in a series of illustrated sequences where the story is written underneath them and the characters depicted on those images use speech balloons to talk" (Tate Britain website).