Edward FitzGerald

Edward FitzGerald (Bredfield, Suffolk, 1809-Norfolk, 1883) was an English writer, translator and Hispanist whose reputation rests almost entirely on one work: his free English version of the quatrains attributed to the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, published in 1859. He wrote in English but spent much of his life studying Spanish and Persian, and both literatures shaped his output. He lived in Victorian England, when the poetry of his friends Tennyson and Thackeray set the literary tone.

He was born into a very wealthy family. His mother, an heiress, led a busy social life in London, while his father, John Purcell, took the FitzGerald surname as the family's fortunes grew. Edward spent part of his childhood in France and studied at Cambridge, where he befriended Tennyson and Thackeray. Since he never needed to earn a living, he settled in his native Suffolk, where he led a quiet life devoted to reading, gardening and his friendships.

His first books were the philosophical dialogue Euphranor (1851) and the collection of sayings Polonius (1852). In the middle of the century he turned to Calderón, whom he translated with considerable freedom, and then to Persian literature. His style was plain and homely; he preferred good humour to solemn melancholy, and many of his works hint indirectly at a longing for something that would complete beauty. His marriage to Lucy Barton, daughter of the Quaker poet Bernard Barton, lasted only a few months.

A manuscript of Omar Khayyam's quatrains reached him in 1857, and it became the Rubaiyat. The poem went almost unnoticed at first, but it later spread thanks to Rossetti, Swinburne and others. After his death, W. Aldis Wright published his letters, which revealed a witty and perceptive correspondent. His influence endures mainly through a translation that is, to a large extent, his own creation.