- 53
Fitzgerald, Edmund
Estimate
30,000 - 50,000 USD
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Description
- Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the Astronomer-Poet of Persia. London: Bernard Quartich, 1859.
- Paper, ink, leather
8vo (210 x 160 mm). Original printed wrappers complete and rare thus; front with a few light spots and faint rubbed stain in upper corner, crease to rear wrapper last leaf. Black morocco Riviere case.
first edition, a mere 250 copies were printed, with 40 going to the "translator" and the remainder selling so slowly they were eventually discounted to the indignity of the penny bin outside of the bookseller's shop. Many copies were simply destroyed. Its later discovery by Rossetti and Swinburne ("I know none to be compared with it for power, pathos, and beauty...." the latter remarked) brought it new attention and it was reprinted, often elaborately so, throughout the end of the 19th century.
The true first of Rubaiyat remains a rarity. Even by 1901 the interest was so great that a copy brought $260 at Bang's Auctioneers in New York, bought back by Quartich (see Prideaux, Notes for a Bibliography of Edward FitzGerald. London, 1911, pp. 16-18). When copies in wrappers do appear, they are often partial or restored and the present is in fact a superior example, with the manuscript correction by Fitzgerald on page 4.
first edition, a mere 250 copies were printed, with 40 going to the "translator" and the remainder selling so slowly they were eventually discounted to the indignity of the penny bin outside of the bookseller's shop. Many copies were simply destroyed. Its later discovery by Rossetti and Swinburne ("I know none to be compared with it for power, pathos, and beauty...." the latter remarked) brought it new attention and it was reprinted, often elaborately so, throughout the end of the 19th century.
The true first of Rubaiyat remains a rarity. Even by 1901 the interest was so great that a copy brought $260 at Bang's Auctioneers in New York, bought back by Quartich (see Prideaux, Notes for a Bibliography of Edward FitzGerald. London, 1911, pp. 16-18). When copies in wrappers do appear, they are often partial or restored and the present is in fact a superior example, with the manuscript correction by Fitzgerald on page 4.
Provenance
Mrs. J. Insley Blair (bookplate to chemise; sale, Sotheby's New York, 3 December 2004, lot 160).
Literature
Tinker 1038; Grolier/English 97