RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM and the SALAMAN AND ABSAL OF JAMI : Rendered Into English Verse By Edward Fitzgerald

Boston, MA: Thomas Y. Crowell. Publication Date Unstated . Hard Cover/Leather. Very Good/None as Issued. Text/Near New w/a whisper of margin discoloration & trace soiling. Publication date unstated; contents from posthumously published, post 1883, 5th Edition. Padded, brown leather boards w/gilt embossed illustrated (pistachios in milky stage) VG w/loss to edges, & complete loss of backstrap. All text blocks in gilt; decorated gilt/brown endpapers, again w/pistachio motif. PO name to fEP. Frontispiece: Portrait of author w/tissue guard. This volume by writer, poet, student of Spanish poetry & Persian literature Edward FitzGerald (1809 - 1883) is the first, and perhaps most influential & oft quoted of English translations. "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám" is the title that FitzGerald gave to his verse rendition of a selection of quatrains attributed to Persian mathematician, astronomer & poet to Omar Khayyám (1048 - 1131). The first printing, in pamphlet form, was published anonymously in 1859. A second, greatly revised edition was issued in 1868 which was followed by three more editions, the final 5th Edition published posthumously. This copy carries both the 1st and 5th Editions of the Rubaiyat; comparative Variations Betweent the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Editions; Comparative Table of Stanzas in the 4 Editions; and, concludes with the less frequently published 1904 translation of Salaman and Absal ("Salaman o Absal"), an allegorical Sufi poem by the Persian Sufi poet Nur ad-Din Abd ar-Rahman Jami, (1441 - 1492) who lived in what is today Afghanistan & Uzebekistan, with relevant notes. Strong copy less leather backstrap.