Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Persian Miniatures

New York: Crescent Books, 1979. Reissue. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good. 10x8x0. Jacket rubbed, ink gift note on verso of front endpaper. 1979 Hard Cover. 122, [2] pp. The classic medieval poem is here illuminated with color photographs of Persian miniatures from the same time period, reproduced from the collection at Reza Abbasi museum, and many published here for the first time. Includes a new foreword by B.W. Robinson. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia". Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald's work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous 'Omar Khayyam clubs' were formed and there was a 'fin de siecle cult of the Rubaiyat.' FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and in many other languages.