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First impression of this new translation - rendered into English Verse by John Charles Edward Bowen. With a literal translation of each Persian quatrain by Dr. A. J. Arberry, Illustrations by Phyllis MacKenzie, and Persian script by Sharafuddin Khorassani Sharaf. With a colour frontispiece and individual monochrome header illustrations to each quatrain by Phyllis MacKenzie. ***Near fine in black cloth-covered boards with gilt titles to the spine, and a gilt Arabic quotation on the front board. The gilt is still beautifully bright, having been protected by the dustwrapper. The boards are clean and unmarked. No bumps. Corners sharp. Slight creasing to the head of the spine. Internally also near fine, with no inscriptions or annotations. No off-setting to the endpapers and no foxing. Pages clean, with no tears or creases. Nice quality paper used throughout. No splitting at the hinges. Spine tight. ***In a near fine original illustrated dustwrapper, which retains the publisher's printed price of 21s. net. The dustwrapper is complete, with just very slight loss at the head of the spine, not affecting the lettering. Some light edge wear and rubbing at the extremities. No chips or tears. No major creases - just some creasing to the top edge. The pale cream dustwrapper is really clean and hardly marked at all. The spine of the dustwrapper is still clean and the titles are unfaded. ***136 pages. 227mm x 155mm. ***'On the publication in 1948 of John Bowen's "Poems from the Persian", he was greeted in the columns of the Daily Telegraph as "A new Fitzgerald". There was something of the prophetic in this, for only two years later a transcription of a newly discovered Persian MS of Omar Khayyam--200 years older than the Bodleian MS used by Edward Fitzgerald, and containing many poems by Omar which were quite unknown to his first English translator--reached John Bowen in the remote Central African dependency of Ngamiland. The lustre of this hitherto unknown treasure--as it were, still bright from the mint--played so powerfully upon his imagination that he at once started to put the Persian quatrains into English verse. Now, twelve years later, he offers the reader a selection of 60 out of the original collection of 172 quatrains'. [Quote taken from the front flap of the dustwrapper] ***'Ghiy?th al-D?n Ab? al-Fat? ?Umar ibn Ibr?h?m N?s?b?r? (18 May 1048 - 4 Dec 1131), commonly known as Omar Khayyam was a Persian polymath, known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. He was born in Nishapur, the initial capital of the Seljuk Empire. As a scholar, he was contemporary with the rule of the Seljuk dynasty around the time of the First Crusade. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided geometric solutions by the intersection of conics. Khayyam also contributed to the understanding of the parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he calculated the duration of the solar year with remarkable precision and accuracy, and designed the Jalali calendar, a solar calendar with a very precise 33-year intercalation cycle that provided the basis for the Persian calendar that is still in use after nearly a millennium. There is a tradition of attributing poetry to Omar Khayyam, written in the form of quatrains (rub??iy?t ???????). This poetry became widely known to the English-reading world in a translation by Edward FitzGerald (Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 1859), which enjoyed great success in the Orientalism of the fin de siècle. ***A beautiful copy of this newly translated edition, and very hard to find in any condition. A collector's copy. ***For all our books, postage is charged at cost, allowing for packaging: any shipping rates indicated on ABE are an average only: we will reduce the P & P charge where appropriate - please contact us for postal rates for heavier books and sets etc.
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