Letters Of Edward Fitzgerald To Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) (dodo Press)

Edward Marlborough FitzGerald (1809-1883) was an English writer, best known as the poet of the first and most famous English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859). In the world at large the poem seems at first to have attracted no attention, but became slowly famous. It was not until 1868 that FitzGerald was encouraged to print a second and greatly revised edition. Meanwhile he had produced in 1865 a version of the Agamemnon, and two more plays from Calderon. In 1880-1881 he issued privately translations of the two Oedipus tragedies; his last publication was Readings in Crabbe, 1882. Of FitzGerald as a man practically nothing was known until, in 1889, Mr W. Aldis Wright, his close friend and literary executor, published his Letters and Literary Remains in three volumes. This was followed in 1895 by the Letters to Fanny Kemble. These letters constitute a fresh bid for immortality, since they revealed that FitzGerald was a witty, picturesque and sympathetic letterwriter.