Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - Softcover

Omar Khayyam

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965231240 ISBN 13: 9780965231244

Publisher: Quality Paperback Book Club, New York, 1996

Synopsis

As A. S. Byatt observes in her new introduction to this edition of Edward FitzGerald's lyrical translation of Omar Khayyam's rubaiyat "forever changed the landscape of English poetry." The 250 copies of its 1859 first printing were left to molder in an obscure English bookshop , but two years later tha volume caught a young scholar's eye. Enchanted with his find, he distributed copies to his friends--among them Sir Richard Burton, Rossetti, Swinburne, Browning, and Tennyson, who later paid homage to the work in his own verse. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam became a sensation in England and, perhaps partly because of the Victorian passion for "oriental" poetry, a smashing success in the United States as well. Further enhanced by A. S. Byatt's fresh insights and accompanied by 12 full-color ilustrations by Edmund Dulac--a French artist known for his imaginative, lively work in versions of The Arabian Nights and Shakespeare's The Tempest--this edition of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam encompasses the very best of the old and the new.

About this title

From the Publisher:

An illustrated gift edition of the quatrains of Omar the tentmaker, which have more admirers today than ever before. Edward Fitzgerald's rendition stands as a monument to the translator's art.

Full-color photographs throughout.

About the Author:

Omar Khayyam was an eleventh-century Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer. Renowned in his own time for his scientific achievements, his fame was reborn in the nineteenth century when Edward FitzGerald published a translation of his rubaiyat (quatrains in a style popular among Persian intellectuals of his day). Though FitzGerald happily confessed to taking liberties with Khayyam's verse, he brilliantly captured their timeless wisdom and passion. Khayyam died in the early twelfth century.

About this edition

• Publisher: Quality Paperback Book Club, New York
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0965231240
• ISBN 13: 9780965231244
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 189
• Illustrator: Edmund Dulac