Miscellanies

An upper-class scholar who lived in the country studying and tending his grounds, Edward Fitzgerald studied and wrote purely out of passion, publishing only sporadically, to little publicity. He translated several works from Greek and Latin, but his most enduring work is a translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, a twelfth-century Persian collection of epigrams. It is a telling translation; underlying much of the poetry are Enlightenment ideals and philosophies popular during Fitzgerald's time.