The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it. --From the Rubaiyat The best-selling poem of all time, Omar Khayaam2s Rubaiyat (3Quatrains4), was first published in the West in 1859 by translator Edward FitzGerald. Excerpts from his well-loved version appear here, accompanied by Bird Parliament, a delightful work by Khayyam2s contemporary, the influential mystic poet Farrid Ud-Din Attar.

The best-loved, bestselling poem ever published, brought up to date with a sumptuous new look. Edward FitzGerald's much-loved, often-quoted, bestselling 1859 translation of the RUBAIYAT, with Attar's charming narrative poem, BIRD PARLIAMENT. Also featuring an extensive new introduction with notes and chronology. Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that put the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Its lines and verses have become part of the western literary canon and his translation of this most famous of poems has been continuously in print in for almost a century and a half. But just who was Edward FitzGerald? Was he the eccentric recluse that most scholars would have us believe? Is there more to the man than just his famous translation? In The Man Behind the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam William Martin and Sandra Martin go beyond the standard view. Drawing on their unique analysis of the more than 2,000 surviving letters of FitzGerald, together with evidence from his scrapbooks, commonplace books and materials from his personal library, they reveal a more convivial yet complex personality than we have been led to suppose."

Bird Parliament or The Conference of the Birds (Manṭiq-uṭ-Ṭayr; 1177) is a Persian allegorical poem by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar, commonly known as Attar of Nishapur. This is a new edition of the first old edition published in 1889, and traslated by Edward FitzGerald (1809 - 1883)

The best-loved, bestselling poem ever published, brought up to date with a sumptuous new look. Edward FitzGerald's much-loved, often-quoted, bestselling 1859 translation of the RUBAIYAT, with Attar's charming narrative poem, BIRD PARLIAMENT. Also featuring an extensive new introduction with notes and chronology. Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that put the Stars to Flight: And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan's Turret in a Noose of Light.

Edward FitzGerald's ‘Rubáiyát’, loosely based on verses attributed to the eleventh-century Persian writer, Omar Khayyám, has become one of the most widely known poems in the world, republished virtually every year from 1879 to the present day, and translated into over eighty different languages. And yet it has been largely ignored or at best patronized by the academic establishment. This volume sets out to explore the reasons for both the popularity and the neglect.