Bøger af Edward Fitzgerald

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia". Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald''s work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous "Omar Khayyam clubs" were formed and there was a "fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat".

Edward FitzGerald or Fitzgerald (31 March 1809 - 14 June 1883) was an English poet and writer. His most famous poem is the first and best known English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which has kept its reputation and popularity since the 1860s. In 1853, FitzGerald issued Six Dramas of Calderon, freely translated. He then turned to Oriental studies, and in 1856 published anonymously a version of the Salámán and Absál of Jami in Miltonic verse. In March 1857, Cowell discovered a set of Persian quatrains by Omar Khayyám in the Asiatic Society library, Calcutta, and sent them to FitzGerald. At the time, the name with which FitzGerald has been so closely identified first occurs in his correspondence: "Hafiz and Omar Khayyam ring like true metal."