In the original dustsheet. Green cloth binding with gilt title on the spine.

• F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available.

            A price bargain

            Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (Classic Collector’s Series)

Reviews:

• Although I’m not a poetry fiend I have seen Omar Khayyam quotes many times and at this price I could not resist it. In perfect condition and contains good illustrations in addition to the verse.

• A delightful book. The well-known verses are splendidly complemented by the period illustrations.

• This book is a classic, well kept by the previous owner.

• Great book and a nice replacement for my own lost copy.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed “the Astronomer-Poet of Persia”. Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald’s work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous “Omar Khayyam clubs” were formed and there was a “fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat”.

 Illustration by Adelaide Hanscom (c. 1910).

FitzGerald’s work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and in many other languages.

Edward FitzGerald or Fitzgerald (31 March 1809 – 14 June 1883) was an English poet and writer. His most famous poem is the first and best-known English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which has kept its reputation and popularity since the 1860s.