About the edition used in the Collaborative Rubáiyát A web exhibition accompanying The Persian Sensation: The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in the West at the Harry Ransom Center
We have based our text of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát on the 1921 edition printed by Thomas Y. Crowell and Company. We've chosen this text because it is in the public domain, and because it includes all five of FitzGerald's editions. A PDF facsimile of Crowell's text is available at Google Books.
We have silently corrected one error in Crowell's text of FitzGerald's first edition with reference to the 1859 Quaritch edition.
Readers seeking a modern scholarly edition of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát should consult Christopher Decker's 1997 edition, published by the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia.
FitzGerald's translation of the Rubáiyát, initially published in 1859, drew little attention. Enthusiasm for the text grew slowly, with the aid of patrons such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Lord Houghton, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, and a more lavish second edition was printed in 1868. The third edition was published in 1872 and the fourth in 1879. FitzGerald authorized the first four editions of his translation; the fifth edition was published after his death in 1889 and varies only slightly from the text of the fourth edition.
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FitzGerald's Rubáiyát
- First edition 1859
- Second edition 1868
- Third edition 1872
- Fourth edition 1879
- Fifth edition
1889
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