ENG 470 / 570 Spring 2025

It can be difficult to understand the long and storied history of The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyàm. Barbara Black offers a lens to understand the publication history through. A selection of Barbara Black’s work, On Exhibit, covers the publishing history of Fitgerald’s translation of the Rubáiyát. This includes its extensive history as a gift book. Black describes how the… more

This 1951 edition of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, published by Shakespeare House in New York, features Edward FitzGerald’s first-edition translation, originally published in 1859. A key identifying feature of this version is that it contains only 75 quatrains, making it… more

• Title: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

• Author: Omar Khayyám

• Translator: Edward FitzGerald

… more

Back Cover

Buckram-style spine

Last illustration of the book, by Edmund J Sullivan

Book cover with a two tone combination: a dark textured material mimicking leather paired with rust-colored cloth boards, the latter textured with a woven like pattern that gives this feeling of traditional binding cloth

Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám: The Astronomer-Poet of Persia, which was rendered in English verse by Edward FitzGerald, is interesting due to the detailed black and white illustrations by Elihu Vedder. This edition was published in 1894 under one of the more prominent publishers, Houghton Mifflin and Company. It was also published under FitzGerald’s 3rd edition of his translation. The… more