Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Finding Aid for the Collection of Material about Omar Khayyam, 1872-1948
378  
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Overview
 
Table of contents What's This?
Description
Omar Khayyam (1048?-1131) was a Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician of the early Seljuk period and is best known for a collection of Rubáiyát, or quatrains, known as the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. The collection contains materials related to the work of Omar Khayyam and scholars who studied his works, much of it collected by Ambrose George Potter in the course of his biographical compilations.
Background
Omar Khayyam (1048?-1131) was a Persian poet, astronomer, and mathematician of the early Seljuk period, best known for a collection of Rubáiyát, or quatrains, known as the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam; in 1859 the English translator Edward FitzGerald selected and combined 101 of the quatrains into a single work, producing a continuity that created an English language masterpiece; FitzGerald's work was publicized by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and the emphasis on the sensuous enrichment of life helped to influence the Decadent school of English poetry in the 1890s; since FitzGerald, the Rubáiyát has been translated into numerous languages. Ambrose George Potter was the outstanding bibliographer of Omar, and author of A Bibliography of Printed Editions of the Quatrains of Omar Khayyam in Foreign Languages (1923) and A Bibliography of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, Together With Kindred Matter in Prose and Verse Pertaining Thereto (1929); he also completed work on a revised and enlarged edition of his 1929 bibliography, but his materials were destroyed by fire in 1938 before publication, and he did not publish another edition before his death in the late 1940s.
Extent
5 boxes (2.5 linear ft.)
Restrictions
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
Availability
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Advance notice required for access.