The Rubáiyát #74

This version of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám was translated into English by Edward FitzGerald, with interesting black and white illustrations produced by Marjorie Anderson. This book was published by London: Collins Clear-Type Press sometime in the 1950s. It includes FitzGerald's first and second editions and an introduction by Laurence Housman. It is one hundred and twenty-six pages long.

This edition stands out in its simplicity. While many editions of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám have intricate and exotic decals, borders, and fonts, this edition revels in…

Barbara Black argues in On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums that the Rubáiyát is in large part appropriated from Persian culture and has been Orientalized. “This poem’s value becomes inseparable from its pretty, crafted, possessable diminutiveness. Khayyám’s verse remains entrenched in the categorically Oriental, in the land of seers and Eastern serenity” (Black 61).  Black does a deep dive into several examples of text, the best example is the change from the original text “roof-top of the world” into “The Sultan’s Turret”. This supports one of Black’s…

The eleventh stanza “Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough, / A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse–and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness– / And Wilderness is Paradise enow.” (Fitzgerald, XI) (Figure 1) is about how one should enjoy the fruits of the moment. That we should be content with the simple things in life and enjoy the present moment. The illustration that accompanies this stanza shows a man, content with his moment (Figure 2). He is surrounded by that serene paradise and enjoys some good food and wine. Although enjoying the present moment is what this stanza is about,…

This edition, like many others, began with a publisher. The publisher for this edition is Collins Clear Type Press, now known as HarperCollins. HarperCollins is considered one of the top publishers in the English-speaking world. Collins was founded in 1819 in Glasgow, Scotland. They published this version of the Rubáiyát sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s in Great Britain. They published this edition in their “Collins Greetings Booklets,” which contained other works such as “A Shakespeare Anthology”, “The Greatest Thing in the World”, and half a dozen…

To my dear Allison,

First, I wish to apologize for not getting you a better gift, but this gift book was on sale, and after flipping through it, I thought you might fancy it. It’s a poem by a Persian named Omar Khayyám and translated by Edward FitzGerald. I thought you might like the introduction, it's by Laurence Housman, which details the creation of the poem and the effort FitzGerald took to translate it. There are illustrations by Marjorie Anderson, which are quite elegant but simple black and white drawings. I found the illustration that follows verse eleven, on page twenty-…