The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
Unknown Year Avenel Books Sullivan Edition
This edition, published by Avenel Books with Edmund J. Sullivan’s quirky artwork is a crisp, clean edition of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It has a leather cover. No date is given, however, I did find a source that put it at 1970. My copy is in very good condition.
Update 12/2024: Remove ~1970s speculative dating from openlibrary/book seller searching from metadata and slug. Copy tweaked as a result.
Publisher: Avenel Books (A Division of Crown Publishers, Inc.) (New York)
Year: n.d. (research leads to very speculative 1970)
Artist: Edmund J. Sullivan
The Book Itself
Smooth, brown leather. Sturdy and slim. Not much else interesting about it.
The Poetry
It gets the job done in a simple fashion. The artwork really bleeds into the poetry pages. Not sure if that’s due to age or just the quality of the stock.
The Illustrations
I love this stark art style. Sullivan’s art is so striking and odd. The artwork aligns in its own way with each quatrain.
History/Information Sourcing
The Open Library seems to have a page for this edition here and it says it was published in 1970. Though this edition feels likely to be in the ~1970 period, I didn’t lock it in for the metadata as I felt like I needed more concrete evidence or indication of time period rather than just it saying as much.