The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

FITZGERALD, Edward.

Item Number: 101210

London: The Richards Press, 1943.

Richards Press pocket edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald. 16mo, bound in full red leather with gilt titles and tooling to the spine, top edge gilt. Additionally contains the Life of Omar Khayyam. Period ownership inscription to the front free endpaper. In very good condition. A charming example.

Eleventh-century Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam composed more than one thousand quatrains, or rubaiyat, on love and mortality, expressing an enigmatic theology that has been interpreted and disputed over the course of centuries. Scholar Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), first translator and author of five separate English versions of the Rubaiyat, did not produce strict translations as much as loose "transmogrifications" of the poetry, often taking great liberties with the original Persian text. Nevertheless, he remains the most famous of Omar Khayyam's translators, and is credited with bringing the Rubaiyat to broad public notice in the English-speaking world.