Rubaiyat

6b Omar Khayyam. Drawings by Elihu Vedder. Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1894. Elihu Vedder’s own copy with his personal bookplate. 

Notes

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is a collection of quatrains (four-line poems) originally written in Persian by Omar Khayyam, who lived from 1048 to 1131 in Nishapur, Persia. Though Khayyam is widely known today for his poetry, in his own time he was celebrated primarily as a mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher, contributing significantly to algebra and the reform of the Persian calendar. His poetry, often contemplative and existential, meditates on the fleeting nature of life, fate, love, and mortality. While Khayyam’s rubāʿīyāt were relatively obscure in Persia for centuries, they gained immense international recognition in the 19th century through the English translation and adaptation by Edward FitzGerald. FitzGerald’s version, first published in 1859, was not a literal translation but rather a poetic interpretation that shaped the quatrains into a cohesive and highly influential work, capturing Victorian imaginations with its philosophical depth and themes of carpe diem.

The Rubaiyat has been reprinted countless times since FitzGerald’s initial English translation, becoming one of the most widely read poetry books in the English language. This illustrated edition featuring drawings by artist Elihu Vedder combined FitzGerald’s evocative text with Vedder’s elaborate, mystical drawings, creating a unified artistic and literary version.

Elihu Vedder was a prominent American Symbolist painter and illustrator known for his allegorical and mystical imagery. Born in New York City, he studied art in Paris and Italy and developed a style marked by intricate symbolism, dreamlike composition, and mythological references. His illustrations for the Rubaiyat are considered masterpieces of 19th-century book art, rich in allegory, expressive figures, and decorative flourishes that visually echo the poem’s meditations on life, death, and the divine. Vedder’s work blends fine art and literature, and his illustrations married with the text of Rubaiyat has left a lasting impact on both American and international book illustration.

Description

Brown cloth binding with gilt and two toned brown and tan illustration and lettering to upper board. Gilt lettering to spine. Fading to lower portion of spine affecting the clarity of the final letter in the present text. Some minimal fraying to points as well as head and foot of spine. Worn binding but fully intact. Entire text of Rubaiyat completely illustrated on each page in black and white followed by additional reproduction of the text without illustration. Notes to follow and ending with biography of Omar Khayyám by Edward Fitzgerald. Three additional pages loosely inserted. One is a page of a December 5, 1937 printing of the New York Herald with the article “Elihu Vedder and his Traits as a Painter” by Royal Cortissoz, a page from the November 1974 edition of the Antiques Journal of the article “Elihu Vedder’s ‘Soul of the Sunflower,’” and a pamphlet page concerning the artist as well. Fine condition overall.

Bookplate of the artist on preliminary endpaper indicating this copy belonged to the artist Elihu Vedder.