COVE

My edition, titled Fitzgerald's Rubáiyaát of Omar Khayam: Standard Edition of the Five Versions, is the twentieth edition in the Sigurd H. Peterson Collection. It was published in 1899 by L.C. Page and Company Incorporated. It is 282 pages long. There are numerous images throughout the book, all of which are described as photo-etchings from original drawings. All of the drawings are in black-and-white, while the captions describing the images are in red ink. This edition features original drawings by Edmund H. Garrett and Gilbert James, among others. No biographical information on the artists in the text. As mentioned in the title, this edition includes all five versions and opens with two critical essays on the work by Nathan Haskell Dole and Edward FitzGerald himself. I found the inclusion of a "Comparative Table of Stanzas in the Five Editions" at the close of the gift book. This seems like it would be geared towards a more academic audience interested in studying discrepancies between the five versions, rather than an audience of the general public. The influence of the Aestheticism movement, which was around the 1890s, when the general public's interest in the Rubáyát, particularly as a gift book, exploded. One of the most striking features is the detailed binding and elaborate and color-printed decorations on the inner title page (reference images), which is an indicator of the time period in which it was produced, and the cultural interests of that time.