The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.: Edited with introduction & notes by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson.

London: Adam and Charles Black,, 1909. A visually and textually interesting edition, handsomely presented First edition of this iteration of James's visual interpretation of the Rubáiyát, much enhanced by Nicholson's scholarly apparatus, and here finely bound. Liverpool-born Gilbert Penrose James (1865-1941) was a self-taught artist-illustrator who worked mainly in an "art nouveau style, [employing] strong contrasts and very mannered and symbolic subjects often with an Eastern setting" (Houfe). This style was ideally suited to Omar Khayyám, whose quatrains James illustrated multiple times over his career, starting with the illustrations he published in Clement Shorter's The Sketch in the late 1890s. The illustrated text is accompanied by a substantial scholarly introduction and annotations by Cambridge orientalist Reynolds Alleyne Nicholson (1868-1945). Nicholson had studied with Goeje and Nöldeke in Leiden and Strasbourg, and worked in partnership with E. G. Browne at Cambridge, whom he succeeded as lecturer in Persian and Arabic. His most important works were Studies in Islamic Poetry and Studies in Islamic Mysticism, both published 1921. "Nicholson's work on Sufism was considered the greatest single contribution made by a European scholar to the subject. He was responsible for opening up one of the major developments of human thought for both specialists and the lay reader, transforming the understanding of it by presenting its major products with rare imagination and literary taste, as well as with careful scholarship. He himself was gifted with poetic sensibility and talent" (ODNB). Quarto (240 x 181 mm). Late-20th-century red morocco for Sotheran, spine lettered in gilt, compartments and covers ruled in gilt and decorated with gilt rose design, front cover with centrepiece of snake and chalice in gilt, gilt turn-ins, marbled endpapers, gilt edges. With 16 colour plates, text within arabesque frames in pale grey. A fine copy. Inman 682; Potter 68.