THE RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM. Rendered into English verse by Edward Fitzgerald With Illustrations by Edmund Dulac.

London: Hodder and Stoughton, [ca.1909]. First edition thus, from the second Quaritch un-illustrated edition (with the additional quatrains). 20 beautiful full page color plates by Edmund Dulac. 4to, publisher’s original full red cloth lettered and elaborately decorated in pictorial designs in gilt on the spine and upper cover. A very bright, clean and handsome copy with exceptional color plates. FIRST EDITION IN THE BRIGHT RED CLOTH. Announced in June 1909, Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the 12th century Persian RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, newly illustrated by Edmund Dulac, became the Gift Book of the year. Each page of verses or quatrains was printed on heavy paper surrounded by delicate borders and was frequently interspersed with Dulac’s evocative paintings. After the RUBAIYAT’S publication in America, its US publisher wrote of the book.”In point of excellence of art, popularity, distinction and profit the crowning achievement...was the publication of the Fitzgerald version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam illustrated by Edmund Dulac. The book was a joy and a treasure, Its public acceptance was immediate and great.” -A.Hughey. One can see why the book received such immediate and unalloyed admiration. For on these twenty exquisitely detailed pages, one finds unsurpassed artistic expression. The viewer is irresistibly drawn into the Persian poetical world of starry nights, labrythine bazaars, dusty streets, flower perfumed bowers, and sultry royal palaces. We can almost smell the pungent incense and feel the hot air move as the fan stirs a tiny breeze. We are palpably drawn into Dulac’s hypnotic images of Middle Eastern sensation and emotion.
The artist used intense but subtle tones of color to create a rich tapestry of visual contrasts, page after page. Pale flesh is swathed in delicate patterned silks and set to pose on hillsides of velvet grass. Figures emerge from opalescent nights and drink thirstily from silver goblets. Dulac vividly captures the temptations of the senses as Omar himself succumbed to them.
The RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM illustrations portray a humanity, poignant and complex, as perhaps nowhere else in Dulac’s repertoire. The modern reader can partake of Fitzgerald’s spell-binding translation of one of the finest poems ever written, while sipping the spiced wine of Dulac’s sensuous illustrations.