Edward FitzGerald

author

Edward FitzGerald

1809–1883

Best known for bringing The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám into English, this quiet, independent writer turned a loose translation into one of the most famous poems of the Victorian age. His work helped spark lasting English-language fascination with Persian verse.

3 Audiobooks

Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 2

Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 2

by Edward FitzGerald

Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 1

Letters of Edward FitzGerald, in Two Volumes. Vol. 1

by Edward FitzGerald

Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883)

Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883)

by Edward FitzGerald

About the author

Born in Suffolk in 1809, Edward FitzGerald was an English writer, poet, and translator who moved in literary circles that included Alfred Tennyson and William Makepeace Thackeray. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, but much of his life was deliberately private and removed from public ambition.

FitzGerald is remembered above all for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, first published anonymously in 1859. Rather than offering a strict line-by-line translation, he reshaped Persian quatrains into a distinctive English poem of doubt, pleasure, time, and mortality, and that version eventually became enormously influential.

He also translated works from Spanish and Persian and wrote lively, thoughtful letters that remain admired for their style and personality. FitzGerald died in 1883, but his version of the Rubáiyát still stands as the work that secured his place in literary history.