Edward Heron-Allen and the Quilter Rubaiyat. Bob Forrest
In: The Heron-Allen Society : newsletter, (2021), 39, pp. 5-7
A short biographical sketch of Harry Quilter, producer of one the many, rare pirate editions of the Rubaiyat, issued in 1883. With some details about Potter’s efforts to gather more information about this book.
Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Dick Sullivan.
The Victorian Webb (2014)
We’re lucky to have FitzGerald’s The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam at all. It was by chance that he met Edward Cowell, one of the few Victorians who spoke Persian, and who was friendly enough to help him. (FitzGerald was no linguist.) It was by chance also that Cowell discovered an Omar Khayyam manuscript in the Bodleian (FitzGerald had tried to stop him going to Oxford).
The discovery of the Rubáiyát. Robert Bernard Martin.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 77-95.
(From With Friends Possessed: A Life of Edward FitzGerald, 1985.)
Martin considers the death of Fitzgerald’s great friend, William Browne, as the significant event which shaped the author’s life. The consensus to explain the Rubaiyat’s success is that “the times were ripe” for works repudiating the traditional religious morality and attempting to find an alternative to it. It is indeed startling to realise that the date of the Rubaiyat’s first appearance, 1859, coincides with that of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. I.B.H. Jewett.
In: Edward FitzGerald’s The Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyám. Ed. by H. Bloom. Philadelphia, Chelsea House, 2004. p. 21-58.
(From Edward FitzGerald. © 1977 by G.K. Hall & Co.)
Jewett pinpoints interesting moments in the correspondence between Fitzgerald and his mentor, Cowell, comparing their versions of the same Khayyam quatrain, thus illustrating “dramatically the difference between translation and creation”. The importance Fitzgerald attached to his earlier translation of Jami’s Salaman and Absal is also touched upon. Fitzgerald emphatic stipulation that Omar never be published without Salaman was apparently disregarded after his death. The article further gives a brief treatment of the problem of the Persian quatrains’ authenticity and of Khayyam’s possible authorship and possible mysticism.
Other Persian quatrains in Holland: the Roseraie du savoir of Husayn-i Ázád. J.T.P. de Bruijn.
In: The great ‘Umar Khayyám. Leiden, Leiden University Press, 2012. pp. 105-114.
De Bruijn explains how, from the nineteenth century onwards, Persian quatrains became fashionable in Dutch poetry. After briefly referring to two great Dutch poets, P.C. Boutens (1870-1943) and J.H. Leopold (1865-1925), De Bruijn concentrates on their common source, an anthology of Persian quatrains in two parts published in 1906 under the titles Gulzár-i ma ‘rifat and La Roseraie du Savoir respectively. The author of these Persian and French anthologies was a Persian by the name of Husayn-i Ázád, who was a physician at the provincial Qajar court of Isfahan. He travelled to London and Paris, but later settled in Paris, where he concentrated on European and Persian poetry. In his chapter, De Bruijn gives a vivid picture of Husayn-i Ázád’s life and how he tried to introduce treasures from the Persian literary tradition to a western public.
Edward Heron-Allen: a polymath’s approach to FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. G. Garrard.
In: FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and neglect. Ed. by A. Poole et al. London, Anthem Press, 2011. pp. 109-126.
Garrard focuses on the fascinating polymath Edward Heron-Allen and his close engagement with FitzGerald’s work in the 1890s.
The similar lives and different destinies of Thomas Gray, Edward FitzGerald and A.E. Housman. A. Briggs.
In: FitzGerald’s Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Popularity and neglect. Ed. by A. Poole et al. London, Anthem Press, 2011. pp. 73-92.
Briggs considers the arresting similarities and instructive differences between FitzGerald and two other retiring poets whose modest poetic output has won an exceptional popularity, Thomas Gray and A. E. Housman.
FitzOmar: Live Eagle. D. Alexander.
In: Creating Literature Out of Life: The Making of Four Masterpieces. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. p. 45-84.
Gives a biographical sketch that suggests the psychological background and context for FitzGerald’s composition of the first (1859) version of the Rubáiyát.
‘Umar Khayyám: philosopher-poet-scientist. S.H. Nasr.
In: Islamic Intellectual Tradition in Persia. Ed. by M. Aminrazavi. London, Routledge, 1996, p. 175-178.
Originally as preface in “Ruba’iyat of Omar Khayyam” , by A. Saidi, 1991
Umar Khayyam
In: Dalal (Ed.) Ethics in Persian poetry (with special reference to Timurid period). Ghulam Abbas Dalal. New Delhi : Abhinav Publications, 1995. ISBN: 8170173140 . Pp. 71–95.
Discusses life of Khayyam and his works, and the views thereon. Was he a poet or not, a drunkard and heretic, and what was his character?