The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
1979 Miller Graphics Persian Miniatures Edition
This 1979 Miller Graphics (but distributed by Crown Publishers and produced/copyrighted (?) by Productions Liber SA) edition feels like a coffee table book. It’s very large, has a shiny dust jacket, and is filled with full page images.
The images aren’t of illustrations of the Rubaiyat but of Persian Miniatures. This is a big part of the book, focus wise. It’s advertised on the cover! As such, I’ve marked this book as not having illustrations and I’ve put the images of the artwork next to the quatrains they appear with under the poetry section.
The text I believe to be the second edition; it doesn’t say which translation it uses.
I can’t honestly tell who exactly the publisher is / who has copyright / etc. and the full relations between the parties. We have Miller Graphics, Crown Publishers, and Productions Liber SA. Crown definitely distributed, Productions Liber SA definitely designed/produced, but I don’t know where Miller Graphics fits in this. The last page says it’s copyright Productions Liber SA and then Editions Minerva SA, but maybe that’s only in Switzerland (as it mentions cities in Switzerland)? But then…who has copyright elsewhere?? I don’t quite get it.
Anyway, put all this together, and this is probably one of the ‘weirder’ copies I have in my collection at the moment. It doesn’t feel like a real Rubaiyat copy…something is ‘off’ about it, but I’m glad I have it in my collection. It is an oddity.
I purchased this copy off of a visitor. Thank you!
Press: Sagdos, Milano (Italy)
Year: 1979
Introduction(s) by: B.W. Robinson (Foreword on time periods of miniature art, not the Rubaiyat)
Contributed by: Ian Chadwick
The Book Itself
The organization of this book is…interesting. There isn’t a table of contents, sections sometimes just begin right next to each other. Sometimes the art is on the page along with the rest of the page being text, and sometimes the art is full page…and sometimes the art bleeds from the left page to the right page of the spread.
The art blocking I understand, it’s kind of an artistic choice. I do not like the lack of headings and content structure. It’s confusing. Then again, I’m not really ‘reading’ the book…I’m just trying to find the core pieces of information so I can catalog it here.
The Poetry
The miniatures generally have captions, which is fantastic. I’ve quoted them below the pictures of their respective miniature.
