Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

This article is about the work by Edward FitzGerald. For poetry attributed to Omar Khayyam, see Omar Khayyam § Poetry.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. Rendered into English Verse
Front cover of the first American edition (1878)
AuthorOmar Khayyam
TranslatorEdward FitzGerald
GenrePoetry
PublisherBernard Quaritch
Publication date
1859
TextRubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. Rendered into English Verse at Wikisource
A collection of postcards with paintings of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Indian artist M. V. Dhurandhar.

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) 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 siècle cult of the Rubaiyat".[1]

FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and in many other languages.

  1. ^ Yohannan, John D. (1977). Persian Poetry in England and America. Caravan Books. p. 202. ISBN 978-0-88206-006-4.