COVE

Publisher

Random House publishing has its origins in the Modern Library, a company which published cheap and accessible paperback reprints of classical literature. The Modern Library was founded in 1917 and published 109 books before being purchased in 1925 by Bennet Cerf – the vice president of the Modern Library – and Donald Klopfer. In 1927, after significantly expanding the business, Cerf and Klopfer decided that they wanted to expand the market of the Modern Library by publishing books they liked at random. Thus, they rebranded the Modern Library as Random House to suit their new undertaking. Random House made its debut in 1928 with the publishing of Candide by Voltaire. Random House Canada was established in 1944 as part of a post-WWII expansion effort, and the company now has international branches in the UK, Germany, and Japan, as well as a Spanish language division with many locations in Spain and Hispanic America. This edition of the Rubáiyát was published in 1947 by Random House, Inc. and Random House Canada simultaneously (image 1).

Illustrator

Not much is known about the illustrator of this edition of the Rubáiyát, Mahmoud Sayah, aside from what is given in the book itself (image 2). Mahmoud Sayah, born in 1915 or 1916, was an Iranian artist and political cartoonist. He graduated from the Engineering and Art University of Teheran as top of his class, and became a political cartoonist. In 1945 or 1946, Sayah moved to the U.S. to work as a correspondent for the Journal Ettala’at, the leading newspaper in Teheran at the time. He spoke fluent English, French, German, and Farsi. At the time of the publishing of the Rubáiyát, Sayah was working on illustrating several books as well as writing a book of his own about “a stranger’s impression of this country” (p. 149).

“Edited with an Introduction by”

Louis Untermeyer, writer of the introduction in this edition of the Rubáiyát (image 3), was a poet, editor, and translator. Born in New York City in 1885, he worked as a designer in his father’s jewelry manufacturing firm before resigning in 1923 to pursue his interest in literature. He published his first poetry collection, First Love, in 1911 and would go on to write or edit around 100 books in his lifetime. In 1961, Untermeyer became the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, and in 1963, he became the Poet Laureate of the United States. Untermeyer became a controversial figure in the 1940s and 1950s for his socialist and anti-war sentiments, and occasional accidental alignment with communist parties, although these ideologies had been prominent in his work since his second poetry collection, Challenge, in 1914. He and Bennet Cerf – co-founder of Random House – were prominent panelists on the popular TV show What’s My Line in 1950, until the controversies around Untermeyer’s political standing forced the show producers to remove him from the cast in 1951, leading the way for Bennet Cerf to become a permanent show member. Louis Untermeyer died in 1977 at the age of 92.