The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

FITZGERALD, Edward.

Item Number: 133904

London: Macmillan & Co, 1902.

Reissue of the first edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, rendered into English Verse by Edward Fitzgerald. Octavo, bound in full morocco, gilt title to the spine, raised bands, inner dentelles, marbled endpapers, top edge gilt. In near fine condition, name to the front free endpaper.

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.