COVE

The Rubáiyát is a poem attributed to Omar Khayyám, a Persian poet and astronomer from the 11th and 12th centuries, but it is actually unclear if all of the quatrains were originally his. Edward FitzGerald was an Englishman in the Victorian era who taught himself Persian and learned to translate this poem completely into English. He then published it, at first without much success, until it blew up in the 1850s and became part of the gift book sensation. A gift book is oftentimes a more ornamental piece of literature, ranging from being covered in elaborate jewels and fancy bindings, to more plain and simple designs. The gift books surrounding the Rubáiyát have been critiqued for their inherent Orientalist feel because a wide variety of them were printed with exotic, elaborate, and beautiful illustration that captured life in the Middle-East in a Westernized understanding of it. The bedazzling of the more expensive editions also attributed to this feel, and have been criticized for taking away the inherent value of the artwork itself and its language to make money off of the "beauty of the foreign," if you will. I will be describing the edition I am currently studying from the rare collection at the Oregon State University Library. 

In 1900, Doxeys Publishing House in San Francisco sent this version of the Rubáiyát to C. A. Murdock to be published in New York. Doxeys would do this with a lot of their prints and manuscripts to stay competitive within the east coast market. (Eliassen, "Bookseller Paul Elder") On the title page it is printed "Doxeys 'At the Sign of the Lark' New York," The Lark being a reference to the publishing house in San Francisco. Doxeys did a lot of publishing for charities, (Eliassen) which was common in the 20th century, "Flower and gem motifs...but another direction taken with American gift books were those issued to promote special causes." (MacDonnell, "The American Gift Book") Unfortunately, there is no evidence to be found that supports this edition was published associated with a charity, but the publisher's name "At the Sign of the Lark" has some interesting backstory. "...American gift books also reflected an expanding literacy rate among American women... They both reflected and influenced American courtship riguals as well... Many American gift books took on the names of flowers appropriate to courtship." This practice seemed to have rubbed off on Doxeys, including "The Lark" in their name in reference to species of lark flowers. The Larkspur symbolizes a beautiful spirit, swiftness and positivity, strong bonds of love, lightheartedness, and youth. The Lark Daisy represents innocence, purity, new beginnings, true love, and the unblemished charm of nature. Doxeys seems to have been no stranger to the flowery gift book trends of the 20th century. 

Florence Lundborg was the illustrator of this edition of The Rubáiyát. She was born in San Francisco in 1870 and between 1893 and 1897 she received her first formal art training at the California School of Design. She got her foot in the door to Doxeys by creating artwork for their magazine The Lark, and that is how she was put onto the work of illustrating Doxey's edition of the Rubáiyát. "Among the female artists who worked for magazines, Florence Lundborg (1871-1949) is perhaps the most unusual. Rather than doing lithographs, she cut woodblocks for her posters that advertised the San Francisco miniature magazine, the Lark. This spirited little review, the brainchild of Gelett Burgess, managed to be simultaneously the most irreverent and most original of the ephemerals." ("Florence Lundborg, 1870 - 1949") Her illustrations were not received well after the 1900 publication of Edward FitzGerald's translation of The Rubáiyát, one critic saying they, "...found her work 'very uneven' and 'too much after the fashion of the Aubrey Beardsley school.'" ("Florence Lundborg, 1870 - 1949") She did heavily rip off the style of Beardsley to illustrate this edition, and oftentimes creating depictions of scenes that do not relate to the language of the poem in any way shape or form. The New York Times and New York Tribune both did not shy away from pointing this out and lambasting her artwork, "Of Miss Lundborg’s drawings, however, it is difficult to speak with approval. They are of the school of the late Aubrey Beardsley, but show nothing of the technical brilliancy which distinguished that curious figure in English art. Here and there is a page not badly decorated so far as the mere disposition of one is concerned, but Miss Lundborg shows very little sympathy with the text. There is nothing of Omar in her work..." ("Florence Lundborg, 1870 - 1949") 

On the immediate inside of the cover is a dedication to the memorial of Sigurd H. Peterson. It was gifted to Oregon State's library as Sigurd Peterson was apparently really into the Rubáiyát.

Bibliography

MacDonnell, Kevin. “The American Gift Book.” ABAA, The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America, www.abaa.org/member-articles/the-american-gift-book. Accessed 23 May 2025.

Eliassen, Meredith. “Bookseller Paul Elder and His Grandma Nellie: The Adventures of a Regional Publisher and Bookseller in Earthquake Country.” American Printing History Association, 23 Feb. 2024, printinghistory.org/paul-elder/.

“Florence Lundborg, 1870 – 1949 | Reid Hall.” Reid Hall, reidhall.globalcenters.columbia.edu/content/florence-lundborg-1870-1949. Accessed 24 May 2025.