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.