Jean de la Fontaine, born in 1621 in the Champagne region of France, is considered one of the foremost successors of the fabulists of antiquity. His Fables choisies mises en vers began appearing when he was 47, and continued to appear for the next 25 years. The fables feature animal characters engaged in witty dialogue, and they conclude with a moral, sometimes a moral of dubious morality. Perhaps because of the animals or the rural settings, the fables are adopted for pedagogical purposes, despite their irony and hedonism.