The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
1900 H.M. Caldwell Co. Remarque Edition
This 1900 H.M. Caldwell Co. Edition is from their ‘Remarque Edition of Literary Masterpieces’ series (this is #11). As I understand/guess, the Remarque is the drawing in the beginning of the book and the others from the series also have some such drawing. This is based on the publisher edition info at the end of the book plus the meaning of Remarque. I am not sure what ‘uniform with this volume’ means, though. Or exactly why the drawing is called a Remarque in this context. If anyone has more info on this, as always, please reach out.
My copy of this 1900 Rubaiyat edition is really showing its age unlike some other copies I have from the same time period and even earlier. The cover is pretty much falling off. I am intending to try repairing it at some point soon. Update 5/2020: I did repair it! See below.
Publisher: H.M. Caldwell Co. (New York & Boston)
Year: 1900
Introduction(s) by: Andrew Lang (To Omar Khayyam)
The Book Itself
There are a few interesting little touches here and there in this edition. The title page has a fantastic burst of color with an orange typed Edward FitzGerald. Then there’s the Remarque/drawing itself. The cover is also interesting to look at with the leafy design.
Beyond that, the book contains not only the fourth edition text, a biographical preface, and edition notes, but also an ‘intro’ of sorts titled ‘To Omar Khayyam’ by Andrew Lang.
The Poetry
Neatly done typeface. The footer and header are a bit tight against the pages for my liking, but it is condensed and gets the job done.
Repairs
I did the repairs myself with just some archival quality glue from Lineco. I only did what was needed so that the book wasn’t completely falling apart. My focus was thus the spine and the layers of the cover that were splitting apart. I glued the spine down, the crack where the spine met the flyleaf pages, and the pieces of the cover that were tearing apart from each other. The glue worked well, so well that I felt that I didn’t need to do anything more at this point. Success!
History/Information Sourcing
A bit scarce on this one. I mostly tried some searches on the publishing company and the meaning of Remarque since I had no idea what that meant. It autopopulated the answer for what a Remarque edition was from here. Also here’s the definition of Remarque itself from Wordnik.
General searches for the publisher have catalog. info pop up, which basically says this book exists. Nothing exciting besides that and people selling copies from this series that I could find.