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Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
(RUBÁIYÁT). Omar Khayyám. The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. Ornamental title-page and 56 illustrated text pages by Elihu Vedder. Elephant folio, publisher's gilt-decorated brown morocco with elaborate gilt turn-ins and pictorial silk endleaves, spine ends and tips rubbed, some surface marks, joints tender. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1884
number 17 of only 100 deluxe copies on japanese paper signed and numbered by vedder. A luxurious publication. He arranged the verses to express the three stages of existence explored in the Rubáiyát -- happiness and youth; death and darkness; and rebirth -- as well as to fit his own romantic interpretation of the verses. A prevalent device is his "cosmic swirl," which, according to Vedder, represented the "gradual concentration of elements that combined to form life; the sudden pause through the reverse of the movement which marks the instant of life; & then the gradual, ever-widening dispersion again of those elements into space." Vedder's edition of Khayyam's Rubáiyát was an instant success, selling out only six days after its debut in Boston on November 8, 1884. With the Rubáiyát, Vedder set the standard for artist-designed books in America and England. Critics rushed to acclaim it as a masterwork, and Vedder as a major American artist.
