The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
1930 Constable and Company Limited Ronald Balfour New Edition
This edition is the first on the site with illustrations from Ronald Balfour and is from Constable and Company Limited. It was first published in 1920 and it says the new edition is from 1930, so I assume this is the New Edition and is from 1930.
The cover doesn’t actually have the title on it, but a quote from XXXVII: “Unborn Tomorrow & dead Yesterday, Why fret about them if Today be sweet” and artwork for it. Definitely unique cover.
The artwork is affixed as plates on the page. The illustrations themselves are very…interesting. Lots of nudity. I tried to provide a wide representation of the artwork so people can get a good feel for it. In the history/info section, I have attached some interesting links I found about the artist/art.
This edition was donated from the library of Ronald E. Wilson.
Publisher: Constable and Company Limited (London)
Press: Mackays Limited Chatham
Year: 1930
Artist: Ronald Balfour
Donated by: The Library of Ronald E. Wilson
Added to Site: 2026-07-26
The Book Itself
The Poetry
The Illustrations
Some of the colorings seem to be a bit messy. The full color ones look fine, but there’s a few with color accents that look like as if they were touched up on the page or ‘raised’. The XIII+XIV and XIX+XX art shows this pretty well. If you zoom on the lips on the former, the coloring is offset from the lips and on the latter, the gold seems like it’s ‘raised’ off of the page. If anyone can explain why it looks like this, please reach out.
History/Information Sourcing
On the artist/art: I did find this nice blog post on the artist himself. There’s also this ‘exhibit’ on Balfour’s Rubaiyat work with a person’s analysis.
The publisher seems to be related to T. and A. Constable. The only source that indicates that plainly is Wikipedia, unfortunately, and I couldn’t find anything else. This page indicates name changes but not about T. and A. Constable specifically. However, at this time, I’ve only seen T. and A. Constable on Rubaiyats as a press rather than publisher. This was printed by Mackays Limited Chatham.