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The gay rubaiyat of Dirk Hannam

The gay rubaiyat of Dirk Hannam with pictures by Ivan Torro.
Mobile : Factor Press, 1998. 55 p.
26 quatrains.

Biegstraaten 70

The Epicurean Humanism of Omar Khayyam

The Epicurean Humanism of Omar Khayyam. Pat Duffy Hutcheon.
Humanist in Canada, 1998 (Spring), p. 22-25, 29.

Summary

The man who was to keep the torch of scientific humanism alight within early Islamic civilization was born a thousand years after the death of Lucretius, and into a vastly different cultural setting. Nevertheless, in all that Omar Khayyam wrote one can clearly recognize the influence of the great Roman poet, and of the naturalistic Epicureanism that he celebrated. This is doubly remarkable when we recall that, during the centuries between Lucretius and Khayyam, a Dark Age had engulfed and stifled Western Europe. The spread of a mystical form of religion throughout the remnants of the Roman empire, combined with the influence of the Germanic tribes, had gradually produced what amounted to a reversion to barbarism. Gullibility and ignorance pervaded life at all levels, while economic activity declined to primitive levels of barter. An attitude of contempt for earthly existence and bodily pleasures had become the norm, along with belief in all manner of superstition and magic.

Bernard Quaritch as an antiquarian bookseller

Bernard Quaritch as an antiquarian bookseller. E. Glasgow.
Library review 47 (1998) nr. 1, p. 38-41.

Summary

This is a brief study of the life and work of the celebrated antiquarian bookseller Bernard Quaritch (1819‐1899). Born in Germany and having served his apprenticeship as a bookseller there, he came to London in 1842 with a letter of introduction to John Murray. After a short period in Paris he finally settled in London in 1845, setting up his own business there in 1845. This flourished and in his Victorian heyday Quaritch had an international fame, priding himself on being bookseller to many “eminent Victorians”. In 1859 he was also first to venture to publish Edward Fitzgerald’s somewhat daring “Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam”. Quaritch had a firm and lasting influence on books and literature of his time. Apart from his enormous influence on private libraries he helped decisively to build up the collections of the British Museum and of the H.C. Folger Library in the USA. He illustrates how the book trade in Victorian England made its own forceful contributions to the advancement of literature, learning and libraries of all sorts.