Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1894. Hardcover. Near fine/very good. Octavo, 120 pp., in publisher's dust jacket. While the Rubaiyat has captured the imagination of almost untold artists, surely the version with the drawings by Elihu Vedder ranks among the very best.

Elihu Vedder (1836-1923) trained as an artist initially in New York, then in Paris and Italy. While he produced various works of art, including glassware, mosaics and statuettes for Tiffany, it would be his designs for the Rubaiyat for which he would be most remembered, as he himself foretold.

In a letter of June 28, 1883, Vedder stated: "I have planned the whole thing, page by page....Evidently this will be the most important record I shall ever leave of myself. I do not intend the drawings to be clear illustrations of the text - except when they naturally happen to be so - they are an accompaniment to the verses, parallel but not identical in thought..." (n.b., quote from "Elihu Vedder, American Visionary Artist in Rome", by Regina Soria, published by the Fairleight Dickinson University Press in 1970, p. 183).

___DESCRIPTION: Bound in full brown cloth with Vedder's design on the front board in gilt and brown ink, gilt lettering and decorations on the spine, bevelled boards, top edge gilt, decorated endpapers by Vedder, with fifty-nine pages of illustrations (including the title and copyright pages) in black and grey with text on almost every page, all pages french-fold; octavo size (8 3/8" by 6 1/2"), pagination: [59 pages of illustrations with text], [1-3] 4-23 (the Rubaiyat in plain verse), [24, blank] [25] 26-45 ("Notes"), [46, blank] [47] 48-61 ("Biographical Sketch of Edward Fitzgerald"). In the publisher's dust jacket which mirrors the designs on the front panel and spine of the cover in blue ink on brown paper, both flaps and the back panel blank.

___CONDITION: Volume near fine, the boards clean with only a hint of wear near the top edge of the back board, straight corners with minimal rubbing, a strong, square text block, the front hinge just starting but holding firm and the rear hinge strong, the interior is clean and bright, and entirely free of prior owner markings; slight wear at the head and tail of the spine and some foxing to the fore- and bottom edges of the text block, else fine. The dust jacket very good, all component parts present and attached, light overall soil to the outside, light overall wear including slight loss at the head of the spine and a closed tear of about an inch and a quarter at both the top and bottom of the front joint; note that the front panel, while still attached to the spine, must be handled carefully as the brittle paper is in some danger of the tears growing larger (we have encased it in mylar). The publisher's box not present with this copy.

___POSTAGE: International customers, please note the following: (i) additional postage may apply as the standard does not always cover costs, please inquire for details; and (ii) any taxes, duty, or tariffs charged by your country will, of necessity, be your responsibility.

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