The Rubaiyat

Conferee of popular acclaim during the closing years of the nineteenth century, this imaginative translation from Persian of selected quatrains (or rubaiyat) discovered in a manuscript claiming them as the work of Omar Khayyam, a medieval poet and astronomer at the Persian Seljuk court, began its life half a century earlier in an edition by the Persian language scholar Edward FitzGerald, whose presentation of the verses’ spiritual and moral subject matter intrigued, upbraided, and amused its Victorian readership. Authors enamored with FitzGerald’s work subsequently wrote their own re-interpretations of The Rubaiyat, taking the opportunity to fit the lines to more familiar poetic meters, including Edward Whinfield in his 1883 edition, and Justin McCarthy in 1889. For his part, Richard Le Galliene decided to take—paraphrasing the introduction to his Rubaiyat, “Petals from all the roses that had sprung out of FitzGerald’s seed,” along with some verses of his own invention, and assemble the edition which today is best remembered, and widely regarded as definitive. His edition, in the form in which it was printed in 1897, is here reprinted by Sugar Loaf Books.