Documentary Note on Melville's Marginalia in Edward Fitzgerald’s Translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.

This copy of Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is one of three editions Melville owned (see also Sealts No. 392 and 393). Although he made no inscription dating his acquisition of the volume, it is likely the first edition Melville acquired, and it is the only copy that contains marginalia in his hand. It likely came into his possession sometime between its publication in 1878 and 1886, the year James Billson sent Melville a “semi-manuscript” copy of The Rubáiyát. Melville’s letter of 2 April 1886 acknowledging that gift indicates his prior knowledge of the work (Correspondence 497; Sealts No. 393)

Melville’s copy is from the first American edition. Bound in green cloth, with the title and publisher in gilt on the cover and spine, the "red line" edition is printed and paginated on the rectos, only, with the text areas enclosed by a red line border. A clipping containing a brief biography of Omar Khayyam derived from Edward Fitzgerald’s introduction is pasted to the printer’s imprint. Melville identified Fitzgerald as the translator on the verso of the front flyleaf. All of the marginalia correspond to his characteristic patterns of marking and present no special problems for attribution. The volume remained in the family’s possession after Melville's death in 1891, and it was among volumes donated to Harvard College Library by his descendants in the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Publication: 2012, Melville's Marginalia Online. First transcribed by Walker Cowen, Melville's Marginalia, 2 vols., Harvard Dissertations in American and English Literature (New York: Garland, 1987), 2:258-259 (Cowen's dissertation was completed in 1965).

Selected studies of Melville that cite this copy: Dorothee Metlitsky Finkelstein, Melville's Orienda (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961). William B. Dillingham, Melville and His Circle: The Last Years (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996). Robert Milder, “Old Man Melville: the rose and the cross,” New Essays on Billy Budd, Ed. Donald Yannella (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 83-113.