Information, Medium & Society: Eighteenth International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

A little over one hundred and fifty years ago a literary work appeared in England that was unique not because of its content but because of its unparalleled printing history: Edward FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. It was privately printed in 1859 in an edition of only 250 copies and initially went unnoticed, but within fifty years it had become a cult phenomenon in England and America, and throughout the twentieth century it was the most frequently published literary work in the English language. Numerous publishers both large and small brought multiple editions onto the market, and over 200 artists illustrated the books. Several publishers produced over 100 different printings, and in some years the same publisher issued more than 30 different copies of the work. Anyone with even the most modest education at the time would have been acquainted with FitzGerald’s work. The goal of paper is to describe the publishing history of this work within a broader cultural context.