OMAR KHAYYAM
ABOUT OMAR KHAYYAM
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Omar Khayyam is surely a unique phenomenon in the history of literature, in the sense that his name would certainly never have been know to any but a few specialists outside the country of his birth had it not been for the quite outstanding popularity of the translation of his poems by Edward Fitzgerald.
What makes the story all the more astonishing is the fact that Fitzgerald's Ruba'iyat would itself in all likelihood have taken a humble place among the half-forgotten ranks of minor Victorian literature, if not been totally neglected, but for the chance interest taken in it by powerful critics of his day.
DISCOVERY
The details of the "discovery" are well known, but always bear repeating. In the words of his editor in Everyman's Library, "His Omar Khayyam, after being offered in wain to Fraser's magazine, had been published in Quaritch as a small quarto, without the author's name. it gained no notice, and most of the two hundred copies sold found their way into a remainder box and were sold at a penny each..."
Rossetti and Swinburne were among the early buyers, and Swinburne took a copy triumphantly to George Meredith, and so the first discovery of its original value came about.
A second revised edition followed ten years later. The first edition was issued in 1859, the second in 1868, the third in 1872, the fourth in 1879, the fifth (in Fitzgerald's Collected Works) in 1889; twenty more editions appeared before the close of the century; and the poem has maintained its extraordinary vogue ever since - there can scarcely be a household in Britain which has not at some time possessed a copy in some shape or form. British soldiers have taken it with them into action during two world wars.
