The Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten

Edward FitzGerald’s  translation of the poems of the Persian astronomer, mathematician, and philosopher Omar Khayyám became one of the most popular books of poetry in the Anglophone world. It was inevitable that parodies of The Rubáiyat would emerge: Carolyn Wells’s The Rubáiyát of a Motor Car (1906), Helen Rowland’s The Rubáiyát of a Bachelor (1915), Wallace Irwin’s The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, Jr. (1902), H. W. Boynton’s The Golfer’s Rubáiyát and, perhaps my favourite, Oliver Herford’s The Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten (1904).

Read the books at The Public Domain Review