Lot 105: OMAR Khayyám (d. circa 1123). Rubaiyat ... translated into English Verse [by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883)]. London: G. Norman for Bernard Quaritch, 1859.

OMAR Khayyám (d. circa 1123). Rubaiyat ... translated into English Verse [by Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883)]. London: G. Norman for Bernard Quaritch, 1859.

Small 4υo in eights (209 x 160 mm). Original printed wrappers (rebacked, some spotting); quarter morocco folding case.

FIRST EDITION, one of 250 copies printed. Fitzgerald's loose translation of the poems of Omar Khayyám, an 11th-century Persian, failed to find a popular audience when first published. In 1860, Dante Gabriel Rossetti received a copy as a gift and circulated it among the Pre-Raphaelite intellectuals in his circle where it quickly began a popular text. Fitzgerald's reputation slowly grew, and in 1868, he published a second and revised edition of The Rubaiyat. Ashley II, p. 121; Grolier English 97; Potter 1.

Property from the Estate of H. Richard Dietrich, Jr.