The Brothers Grimm

Jean de la Fontaine!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_la_Fontaine

You should be able to find many of his classic Fables online – however, the original French versions are in rhyming verse, so the translations probably vary in quality quite a bit. If you read a few lines and think “this kind of sucks,” try to find another version.

“The oak and the reed” is a classic – the oak thinks it’s so great…just you wait, oak…
I think “country mouse and city mouse” is his originally too.

There’s an allegorical tale about death called The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant.

Hans Christian Andersen.
Scheherezade (Arabian Nights).

Notice Andersen, Grimm, etc. are compiles and wrote fables down from oral tradition, rather than their own imaginations. So modern compilations of folk tales is another way to find such.

I loved the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson, those are great for Fairy Tales. As far as fables go, I would turn to the Sufi’s. There was such a beautiful tradition of storytelling with the Sufis. I particularly loved reading the hilarious antics of Nasruddin. I don’t know what your religious leanings are, but all I truly remember about these stories (which I read when I was 9 or 10) were the adventures that Nasruddin had and the inevitable lessons he would learn from them.

They may be hard to find, I think that many people translated and published the ancient stories, but here’s a head start on amazon: amazon search. I would recommend giving Idries Shah a try.

The now-little-known pickle seller, Schmuel Goldstein, was renowned in his day as a fable-teller in lower Manhattan around the turn of the century. Perhaps the best-known of his fables was The Tale of the Cockroach in the Pickle Barrel, the moral of which was, “Hey, we do the best we can but you might still get a cockroach in with your pickles.” Another beloved fable of Schmuel’s was the Tale of the Rent-Controlled Apartment That Everyone Knew About But No One Could Find, the moral of which was “I wish I could help you, but I promised my cousin she could have it.” Most of Schmuel Goldstein’s fables died with him in 1932, and whatever ones were left were forcibly thrown into his coffin by disgruntled relatives and friends, who claimed that none of the fables nor their morals ever actually improved their lives.

I am an eBay seller, married to Schmuel Goldstein’s niece and I take great offense at your comment. Where did you say he was buried?

Yes, I too take offense. Schmuel was a great man.

Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories.

Do a search on Fable Forest Tales. They are fun animal stories for kids.