WILLY POGÁNY'S BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED RUBAIYAT

POGÁNY, Willy. Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., [circa 1920]. Octavo, 20th-century three-quarter dark purple morocco gilt, raised bands, elaborately gilt-decorated spine, pastepaper-style boards and endpapers, top edge gilt, uncut. $1500.

Attractive Ballantyne-printed edition of Willy Pogány's illustrated Rubaiyat, with 16 mounted color plates and intricate in-text decorations, in a handsome morocco binding by Whitman Bennett.

Pogány—who "specialized in gift book embellishment both before and after the First World War"—first illustrated this 12th-century Persian poem in 1909 (Harthan, 242). This edition uses Fitzgerald's esteemed translation (first published in 1859), which "adapted the quatrains into a connected theme, skeptical of divine providence, mocking the transience of human grandeur and concentrating on the pleasures of the fleeting moment," producing in the process some of "the most frequently quoted lines in English poetry" (Drabble, 716). The work was printed for Crowell by the Ballantyne Press, founded in 1799 by Sir Walter Scott's schoolmate and long-time friend James Ballantyne; Ballantyne developed such a wide reputation for fine printing as to be commissioned by both the Vale Press and Ergany Press to print their books. See Greer 21e.

A very nearly fine copy.