"The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" illustrated by Willy Pogany George Harrap, London - 1909 first UK edition first printing - 25cmx18cm - 24 tipped-in Pogany plates - condition: very good, in original decorative binding, complete with all plates. The first of four editions Pógany would illustrate, this RUBAIYAT stands out for its great beauty, even in a field of contemporary editions illustrated by fellow Golden Age illustrators like Dulac and Charles Ricketts. It is a testament to Pogány's extraordinarily productive years in London before the outbreak of the first World War Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is the title that Edward FitzGerald gave to his 1859 translation from Persian to English of a selection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048–1131), dubbed "the Astronomer-Poet of Persia". Although commercially unsuccessful at first, FitzGerald's work was popularised from 1861 onward by Whitley Stokes, and the work came to be greatly admired by the Pre-Raphaelites in England. FitzGerald had a third edition printed in 1872, which increased interest in the work in the United States. By the 1880s, the book was extremely popular throughout the English-speaking world, to the extent that numerous "Omar Khayyam clubs" were formed and there was a "fin de siècle cult of the Rubaiyat".[1] FitzGerald's work has been published in several hundred editions and has inspired similar translation efforts in English, Hindi and in many other languages.