In 1840 Louisa Stuart Costello published in Fraser’s Magazine an article on classic Persian poetry, which included a section on Omar Khayyam with translations of some verses. Interest in the poetry of Omar Khayyam received its first major boost in the English speaking world when Edward Fitzgerald published a translation of 75 quatrains in 1859. Fitzgerald’s mentor was Professor Edward Byles Cowell, who, in the previous year, had published an essay entitled “Omar Khayyam, the astronomer-poet of Persia” which included translations of thirty quatrains. In 1885 Whitley Stokes, a renowned Irish orientalist and linguist, published an English translation of eighteen quatrains in the journal ‘Academy’, nr. 663. In the National Review, December, 1890 Charles J. Pickering published a lengthy essay entitled “Umar of Nishapur”, in which he compared several notable translations including those in English by Fitzgerald and Edward Whinfield and that in German by Von Hammer. In 1896 Nathan Haskell Dole, acting as editor, published the following tome in two volumes: Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam English, French, German, Italian, and Danish translations comparatively arranged in accordance with the text of Edward Fitzgerald’s version with further selections, notes, biographies, bibliographies and other material. Included in the “further selections” are translations of assorted quatrains by Henry George Keene and Frank Siller. In 1901 Dole and Belle Walker published two volumes of “Flowers from Persian Poets.” The first volume contains a short article about Omar Khayyam and translations of twenty two quatrains by an unknown translator. Omar Khayyám: some verses and an […]
