{"product_id":"c-1899-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam-fitzgerald-illustrated-art-nouveau-binding-crowell-new-york","title":"c.1899 Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám — FitzGerald — Illustrated — Art Nouveau Binding — Crowell, New York","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/strong\u003e Omar Khayyám; rendered into English verse by Edward FitzGerald\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eTitle:\u003c\/strong\u003e Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám and the Saláman and Absál of Jámí\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/strong\u003e New York, Thomas Y. Crowell \u0026amp; Co., [circa 1899].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/strong\u003e Text in English.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 7.5 × 5 inches.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003ePages:\u003c\/strong\u003e Approximately 295 pages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eBinding:\u003c\/strong\u003e Publisher's decorative green cloth over boards. The front cover is elaborately gilt-stamped in an Art Nouveau design: a wide interlaced knotwork border frames six raised panel blocks of stylized floral and vine-leaf ornament arranged symmetrically around a central oval cartouche bearing the title in gilt script. The spine carries the title in gilt script above decorative panels of stylized foliage and interlaced ornament. The rear board is plain green cloth. Light wear at corner tips and spine ends; the cloth retains its color well and the gilt remains bright overall.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eContent:\u003c\/strong\u003e Pages generally clean with mild tanning to the text-block edges. The binding is tight and square. The front free endpaper bears two period ink inscriptions: \"Mrs John A. Lacy\" in one hand, and below, \"Bida Stafford \/ Feb. 14, 1902\" — a Valentine's Day presentation inscription. A red silk ribbon bookmark is present. No bookplates noted.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIllustrations:\u003c\/strong\u003e The title page is printed in two colors (green and red\/orange) in an Arts and Crafts style, centering on a decorative vase motif surrounded by dense foliage within an ornamental frame. The volume contains a color frontispiece and three additional full-page color plates depicting Persian and allegorical figures in richly ornamented garden and landscape settings, each executed with bold outlines and flat areas of color in an Orientalist idiom. One black-and-white illustration in the Saláman and Absál section renders a polo scene in a Persian manuscript style. The color plates carry artist signatures in the lower right corner, though the name is not clearly legible in the photographs.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eEstimate:\u003c\/strong\u003e USD 125–175.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe book:\u003c\/strong\u003e This Crowell edition is among the more comprehensive turn-of-the-century presentations of FitzGerald's Rubáiyát, offering not only the revised fifth edition of the poem but also the original first edition of 1859, together with FitzGerald's translation of the Saláman and Absál of Jámí, a biographical essay on Khayyám, scholarly notes, and a detailed comparative table of all four editions. The Rubáiyát had enjoyed an extraordinary vogue in the English-speaking world since its rediscovery in the 1860s, and illustrated gift editions such as this one — with their Art Nouveau decorated bindings and color plates — represent the peak of that enthusiasm at the century's turn. The 1902 Valentine's Day inscription places this copy squarely within the culture of the book as an elegant present, a role the Rubáiyát was well suited to play.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe author:\u003c\/strong\u003e Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883) was an English poet and scholar whose rendering of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, first published anonymously in 1859, became one of the most celebrated and widely reprinted poems of the Victorian era, despite its initial obscurity. Discovered by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and championed by Swinburne and others, it spread rapidly through literary culture and was issued in hundreds of editions. FitzGerald's version is less strict translation than creative reimagining: working from Persian manuscripts introduced to him by his friend Professor Edward Cowell, he transformed Khayyám's quatrains into a meditation on pleasure, fate, and mortality that resonated deeply with late-Victorian sensibilities. He revised the work through five editions and also translated the Saláman and Absál of Jámí, which appears alongside the Rubáiyát in this volume.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"MFLIBRA - Antique Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47516819783929,"sku":null,"price":150.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/mflibra.com\/products\/c-1899-rubaiyat-of-omar-khayyam-fitzgerald-illustrated-art-nouveau-binding-crowell-new-york","provider":"MFLIBRA - Antique Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}