This version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is a parody named “The Rubaiyat of Doc Sifers.” It was written by James Whitcomb Riley and published by The Century Co. in 1897. James Whitcomb Riley was very popular by the time this was published, so it kind of flies under the radar of his published works. The Century Co. was also a very popular book company at the time, with many published titles under their belt. The book was illustrated by Charles M. Relyea, an illustrator from Albany, New York. Funnily enough, when he was hired to do the illustrations, James Whitcomb...
In Barbra Black’s essay, On Exhibit: Victorians and Their Museums, she writes about how The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is appropriated by Western Culture. When Bernard Quaritch first published 250 copies of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám it did not sell very well. It wasn’t until it was picked up by a few scholars and spread around that it took off and became popular. After this, books started to emerge of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám that people described as “‘a jewel,’ ‘a Persian Pearl,’ or ‘a ruby in a ring of gold,’” (Black 60). The poem also became “...
Stanza 89 in The Rubáiyát of Doc Sifers along with this image (see figure 1), convey a greater meaning of the goodness of Doc Sifers by showing what he has gone through in the past. This window into the past of Doc Sifers also reveals some of the trauma he has experienced as a man who practices medicine. In the image, we see Doc kneeling, taking care of a man in a grass field, holding his hand as it appears the man is just waking up. The stanza begins with the line “Doc's own war-rickord wuzn't won so much in line o' fight / As line o' work and nussin' done the wownded, day and...
