The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, The Astronomer-Poet of Persia ..

Boston: The Riverside Press / Houghton Mifflin and Co, 1884. Signed Limited Edition. Near fine/Fine. Elihu Vedder (1836 - 1923). Elephant Folio, 17 x 14 1/2 in. (430 x 365 mm); pp. [128], 8 pages at the end of the book have printed notes and an index of illustrations. This is NUMBER 80 of 100 DELUXE COPIES on Japanese paper with remarque plates. Decorative title and 56 mounted Albertype plates by Elihu Vedder, well inked and sharp. SIGNED BY THE ARTIST on the limitation page. Original brown morocco binding by Riverside Press (stamp on verso of f.e.p.), blind tooled and gilt on a design by Vedder; silk doublures decorated with vines, fruit and flowers, also on Vedder's design; wide turn-ins with elaborate gilt dentelles; a.e.g. endpapers in excellent condition, bar a little rubbing in the middle of the spine. Some foxing and staining throughout, mostly limited to the tapes that hold the heavy paper mounts on which the plates are pasted, and in 6 instances small spots on the plates but otherwise limited to the border areas, not the images themselves. Housed in a bespoke handsome and very solid brown linen drop-back box, with brown morocco profiles and spine,gilt titles and fillets on black morocco labels, beige silk lining.

[Potter 201; Fielding 1986, p. 972]. An impressive FIRST FOLIO DELUXE EDITION of the ever-popular collection of quatrains (rubāʿiyāt) by the Persian polymath Omar Khayyám (1048 - 1131). This book was a publishing sensation: both the deluxe edition of 100 copies and the regular unsigned print run with paper cover and typeset text were released in Boston on November 8th, 1884 and sold out within six days. Houghton Mifflin reissued the Vedder Rubáiyát in different formats in 1886. New editions and reprints continued into the 1920s.

This project was was a very personal one for the American artist Elihu Vedder who worked on the 57 illustrations for almost a full year. His highly mystical imagery and visionary style was a perfect match for the strong emotional content of the Rubáiyát, and probably mirror his own emotions at the loss of two of his children and the birth of another. Vedder rearranged the stanzas from Edward Fitzgerald's translation, organizing them in three sections (Joy, Death, Rebirth) which echo his own emotional path and the revelations he drew from the Persian quatrains. The works were printed on Japanese paper for the deluxe edition and reproduced the pencil, ink, chalk, and watercolor drawings through a new photographic process, Albertype, which could accurately replicate the subtle gradations of the originals. Later editions were smaller and used a half-tone process which could not convey the full depth of Vedder's artistry. The original drawings are in the holdings of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, as is a deluxe copy of the book (copy offered here in finer condition) and were the subject of a special exhibition in 1998 "Elihu Vedder's Drawings for the Rubáiyát" , which then toured several museums around the U.S. in 2008-2009.

ELIHU VEDDER (February 26, 1836 - January 29, 1923) was an American symbolist painter, book illustrator, and poet. Born in New York City, he trained in New York, Paris and Italy, where he was strongly influenced by Italian Renaissance work and by the modern Macchiaioli painters. He finally settled in Rome after the end of the Civil War and had a home in Capri following the commercial success of his Rubáiyát. He also traveled frequently to England and was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, and by the work of English and Irish mystics such as William Blake and William Butler Yeats. His most public commission was for mural paintings at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C., and Tiffany & Co. commissioned him to design statuettes, mosaics and glassware. He moved back to Italy permanently in 1906 and is buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.