Edward FitzGerald

(1809 - 1883)

The English writer Edward FitzGerald published his heavily adapted translation of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám in 1859; the paean to hedonism remained ignored until the Pre-Raphaelites embraced it in the following decade. He allegedly only ate meat at the houses of others, and his friends included William Makepeace Thackeray; Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Fanny Kemble.