The Original Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam [Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam]

Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc, 1968. Limited Edition. Hardcover. Fine. One of 500 copies, octavo size, 96 pp., signed by both Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah, in a slipcase. This edition of "The Rubaiyyat" by Persian mathematician and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) is translated by British poet Robert Graves (1898-1985) and Omar Ali-Shah (1922-2005), a writer and leading expert on Naqshbandi Sufism. Their translation deviates from that of Edward Fitzgerald (1809-1883), who created the first and most famous translation of Khayyam's poetry, and both Graves and Ali-Shah are critical of Fitzgerald's translation and his (often erroneous) interpretation of the Farsi language. Although their translation was met with controversy, as it was supposedly based upon a twelfth-century manuscript that was never produced, Graves and Ali-Shah create a translation of Khayyam's poetry with more sensibility to how the poet may have intended it.

Graves was a poet and writer himself, best known for his historical novel "I, Claudius" and numerous collections of poetry, and brings a poet's discernment to these ancient set of quatrains.

___DESCRIPTION: Quarter black cloth with cream paper boards, gilt lettering on the spine, fore-edge rough cut, cream endpapers; octavo size (9.5" by 6.5"), pagination: [i-x] 1-86, one of 500 copies, this number 202, signed by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah on the limitation page. In a slipcase covered in cream paper with a light salmon-coloured paper label with red and black ruled borders and title in red and black.

___CONDITION: A fine copy; the covers clean, the corners straight and unrubbed, the binding tight with solid hinges, and the interior is clean and bright; crisp and as new. The slipcase is near fine, strong and sturdy, clean, free of splits or tears to the seams; light overall soil and a hint of wear to one seam.

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