This edition presents the classic free translation by Eward Fitzgerald of the great Persian poem (rubaiyat) by the 12th century astronomer and poet – Omar Khayyam. Fitzgerald`s masterful translation was first published as an anonymous pamphlet in 1859.Its colourful, exotic and remote imagery greatly appealed to the Victorian age` s fascination with the Orient, while its luxurious sensual warmth acted as a atriking counterpiont to the growth of scientific determinism, industrialisation to the soulless Darwinian doctrine of the srvival of the fittest. Greatly praised by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Swinburne, Ruskin and William Morris, the romantic melancholy of the poem anticipates the poetry of Matthew Arnold and Thomas Hardy, while its epicurean motifs link it to the Aesthetic Movement.