The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

FITZGERALD, Edward. With Illustrations by Edmund Dulac.

Item Number: 133466

London: Hodder and Stoughton, c. 1900.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald and with illustrations by Edmund Dulac. Octavo, original cloth with gilt titles and tooling to the spine and front panel, illustrated with full color plates tipped in. In near fine condition.

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.