Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

By Omar Khayyam

Subjects: Translations into English, Persian poetry

Description: Omar Khayyám was an eleventh-century Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer. Renowned in his own time for his scientific achievements, his fame was reborn in the nineteenth century when Edward Fitzgerald published a translation of his rubáiyát (quatrains in a style popular among Persian intellectuals of his day). Fitzgerald's first translation was first published anonymously in 1859. (His revised editions were published in 1868, 1872, and 1879). FitzGerald's translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is perhaps the most frequently read Victorian poem of all time.