In 1840 Louisa Stuart Costello published in Fraser’s Magazine an article on classic Persian poetry, which included a section on Omar Khayyam with translations of some verses.<br />Interest in the poetry of Omar Khayyam received its first major boost in the English speaking world when Edward Fitzgerald published a translation of 75 quatrains in 1859. Fitzgerald’s mentor was Professor Edward Byles Cowell, who, in the previous year, had published an essay entitled “Omar Khayyam, the astronomer-poet of Persia” which included translations of thirty quatrains.<br />In 1885 Whitley Stokes, a renowned Irish orientalist and linguist, published an English translation of eighteen quatrains in the journal 'Academy', nr. 663.<br />In the National Review, December, 1890 Charles J. Pickering published a lengthy essay entitled “Umar of Nishapur”, in which he compared several notable translations including those in English by Fitzgerald and Edward Whinfield and that in German by Von Hammer.<br />In 1
