Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1899)

by Edward Fitzgerald (Author), James Gilbert James (Illustrator)

• New

  Paperback
  2006

  $19.76

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $3.76

  In the renowned translation by Edward FitzGerald, with an introduction by Professor Cedric Watts. Here is Edward FitzGerald's original translation of the Rubaiyat, the collection of poems attributed to the Persian astronomer and mathematician, Omar Khayyam. FitzGerald's distinctive version (1859), with its oriental imagery and sensual warmth, made an exotic appeal to the Victorian imagination. Its scepticism fitted a time of increasing religious doubt; its romantic melancholy resonated with the writings of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy; and its epicureanism heralded the Aesthetic Movement. It has inspired composers, rock groups, artists and film-makers. As rendered by FitzGerald, the Rubaiyat remains a seductively subversive poem.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2007

  $4.29

• New

  Paperback
  1981

  $10.60

  Revered in eleventh-century Persia as an astronomer, mathematician and philosopher, Omar Khayyam is now known first and foremost for his Ruba'iyat . The short epigrammatic stanza form allowed poets of his day to express personal feelings, beliefs and doubts with wit and clarity, and Khayyam became one of its most accomplished masters with his touching meditations on the transience of human life and of the natural world. One of the supreme achievements of medieval literature, the reckless romanticism and the pragmatic fatalism in the face of death means these verses continue to hold the imagination of modern readers.