Appendix: Two Early Reviews of the Rubaiyat (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam) (Critical Essay‪)‬

For many years it was thought that the earliest criticism of the Rubaiyat to appear in print was a review of the second edition, published in the North American Review in 1869, by Charles Eliot Norton. In 1960, however, an earlier review, dating from just six months after the publication of the first edition, was rediscovered in The Literary Gazette, a London weekly. (See Michael Wolff, "The Rubaiyat's Neglected Reviewer: A Centennial Recovery," VN 17 (1960): 4-6.) Both reviews are reprinted below. Norton discusses FitzGerald's volume together with J. B. Nicolas' French translation of Omar Khayyam (1867), upon which FitzGerald himself also comments in the introduction to his second edition (1868). Norton's extensive extracts from Nicolas' translation--translated in turn by Norton from French into English--have been omitted; otherwise, the reviews are here given in their entirety. I. The Literary Gazette no. 66, New Series (October 1, 1859): 326.