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William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’

William Morris, Edward Burne-Jones and ‘The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám’. Michaela Braesel.
Apollo (2004), (February)

Braesel discusses the manuscript designs by the British artists William Morris (1834-96) and Edward Burne-Jones (1893-98) for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám which was translated in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald. The author notes that two copies of the manuscript can be differentiated by Burne-Jones’s involvement in the designs, details Morris’s biographer Mackail’s account of the colour scheme adopted for the patterns in the manuscript, and compares the second version of the `Ynglings’ manuscript with patterns on the London manuscript for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. She notes Morris’s interest in designs featuring female musicians, traces the history of the small manuscript format, and examines Morris and Burne-Jones’s reasons for avoiding illustrating the dramatic segments of the text.

How ‘Umar Khayyám inspired Dutch visual artists

How ‘Umar Khayyám inspired Dutch visual artists. Jos Biegstraaten.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 135-142.

Biegstraaten examines the work of four Dutch artists who were inspired by Khayyám’s quatrains: Willem Arondéus (1894-1943), Ger Gerrits (1893-1965), Siep van den Berg (1920-1998) and Theo Forrer (1923-2004).

Edmund Dulac’s Book Graphics and the Problem of Orientalism in British Illustration of Edwardian Era and the Second Decade of XXth Century

Edmund Dulac’s Book Graphics and the Problem of Orientalism in British Illustration of Edwardian Era and the Second Decade of XXth Century. Dmitry Lebedev.
In: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Art Studies: Science, Experience, Education. Atlantis Press, November 2019.

Summary

At the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, Europe-wide enthusiasm about the Eastern art, which varied from Iranian miniature to Japanese engraving, led to the popularity of many artists whose works were impacted by Orientalism. In these circumstances, large London publishers, annually producing luxury gift books for Christmas, trying to adjust to the mass excitement around the Eastern art, invited young and promising graphic artists to illustrate these publications. Among the invited artists who actively cooperated with such publishers was the outstanding French-English illustrator Edmund Dulac (1882-1953). The article reveals one of the key aspects of Dulac’s oeuvre. The author considers artist’s attempts to convey the thematic and stylistic originality of the Oriental art in the context of book illustration of the Edwardian era and the second decade of XXth century. The work traces Edmund Dulac’s creative career and examines the cycles of his illustrations in order to identify both typical and original stylistic and compositional techniques used by the author to create works in the spirit of orientalist aesthetics. The article also deals with oriental works of Dulac’s contemporaries and analyses them in comparison with each other.

The Art of Omar Khayyam. Illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat

The Art of Omar Khayyam. Illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat. William H. Martin & Sandra Mason. London : New York, Tauris, 2007. 184 p. Index. ISBN 978-84511-282-0

Summary:
“This book describes a phenomenon unique in publishing history: a book of poetry, published anonymously nearly 150 years ago – purporting to be the translation of an eleventh century Persian work – which has remained almost continuously in print and has stimulated at least 130 illustrators to try to illuminate the verses it contains.”

Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Part 1: Illustrating FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat
– A unique publishing phenomenon
– Illustrating The Rubaiyat
– A century of change in illustration
– Still popular – at home and abraod
Part 2: Illustrating individual quatrains
– Presenting the quatrains
– Illustrations for FitzGerald’s first edition – quatrains 1-75
– Illustrations for FitzGerald’s other editions of The Rubaiyat
– Illustrations unrelated to specific quatrains
Appendix 1. Publishers and illustrators of FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat
Appendix 2. Artists who have illustrated FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat
Appendix 3. Published versions of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam Appendix 4. Omar Khayyam and his Rubaiyat
Appendix 5. FitzGerald and his Rubaiyat
Notes
Select bibliography
Index

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. An updated bibliography

The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. An updated bibliography. Jos Coumans. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2010. 250 p. ISBN: 978-908-72-8096-3

Summary

Since the collected poems of eleventh- and twelfth-century Persian philosopher Omar Khayyám were first translated into English in 1859 by Edward Fitzgerald, the Rubáiyát has become one of the most popular books of verse in the world. In addition to English, it has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Russian, Urdu, and many other languages. It has been published in numerous editions: precious volumes with bejeweled bindings, artist’s books, scholarly and critical editions, forgeries and fake editions, making it a perfect object for both book collectors and lovers of poetry. This comprehensive volume is the first bibliography of Khayyám’s classic work since the first Rubáiyát bibliography by A.G. Potter, which was published in 1929.

Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Appendix I: Manuscripts
Appendix II: Bibliographic references
Appendix III: Statistics
Appendix IV: A word on Potter’s bibliography
Bibliography of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
1. FitzGerald’s versions
2. Other translations
3. Multilingual editions
4. Miniature books
5. Miscellanea
6. Study & criticism
7. Interpretations
Indices