RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM

London: Constable and Company Limited, 1920. No. 48 OF 50 COPIES SIGNED BY THE ILLUSTRATOR. 315 x 225 mm. (12 1/4 x 9"). [80] leaves. Translated by Edward FitzGerald.
Original gold and black linen backed with black buckram, upper cover and smooth spine with bold gilt lettering. With 17 black & white plates, 14 black & white plates with color highlights, six color plates, and an extra hand-watercolored plate, all tipped onto Japanese vellum, and 39 illustrations of naughty nymphs in the text, all by Ronald Balfour. Printed on Japanese vellum. ◆Extremities rather worn, a few scratches on boards, leaves faintly browned at edges, but still a very good copy of this special limited edition.

The exotic and erotic illustrations in this printing of FitzGerald's 1859 version of the Rubaiyat combine the black & white Decadent style of Beardsley with the richly colored Art Deco fashion illustrations of Georges Barbier, bringing the poem's stately quatrains into the Jazz Age. This edition launched the career of Ronald Egerton Balfour (1896-1941), a self-taught artist who worked as a costume designer and illustrator during the interwar period. The elaborate garments in the Rubaiyat plates speak to his talent in both categories. Born into a wealthy and influential family, he seems to have engaged in artistic pursuits more for pleasure than for money. He ran with the "Bright Young Things" in the 1920s, designing outrageous costumes for their fancy dress parties, and married a beautiful debutante for whom he designed clothes. During the 1930s, he did work for Fox Films as an art director and costume designer, travelling to Hollywood in 1934 to work on Anna May Wong's costumes for "Java Head." The imaginative illustrations here appeared in several later editions, but ours is the deluxe first printing..