Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Rendered into English Verse (International Collectors Library)

191 pp. 8vo. Dark blue leatherette, gilt titles and decorations, ribbon marker bound in. The first, second, and fifth editions of Fitzgerald's translation, with variations from the third edition, a biographical preface of Fitzgerald, and a chapter on Omar Khayyam. Includes color plates by Edmund Dulac. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains 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 siecle cult of the Rubaiyat.' FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and in many other languages.