GREGYNOG PRESS. OMAR KHAYYAM. MORRIS-JONES, John, Welsh translator. ~ Penillion Omar Khayyam.
Translated from Persian to Welsh by Sir John Morris-Jones. No. 11 of 25 specially bound copies. 10 wood engravings by Robert Ashwin Maynard. Text printed in blue and black in Caslon type on Batchlor watermarked paper. 8vo., original full blue levant polished morocco by George Fisher at the Gregynog Bindery, spine in six compartments with raised bands outlined in blind, titled in gilt in second panel, turn-ins with double gilt fillet, signed for the bindery and for George Fisher in gilt on the lower turn-in, top edge gilt, others uncut. An extremely handsome copy, housed in a later blue cloth chemise and slipcase with blue morocco and gilt spine labels.
A fine printed and beautifully illustrated version of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by a famous Welsh scholar, perfectly bound by Fisher.
The book had a slow and painful birth which argument between Maynard and John Morris-Jones about the illustrations. Morris-Jones was extraordinarily critical of every tiny part of each illustration wanting it to reflect his every word of translation. One letter from Maynard in July of 1928 reflected Maynard’s polite frustration “my idea in these Omar decorations in not especially to illustrate specific things in the text, but rather to summarise the general impressions I have of the book, and to do it in such a way that the right atmosphere is created. Above all to decorate...you may be able to see your visual image ina decorative way, but it does not necessarily follow that I ca. Perhaps William Blake, for this reason, was the happiest of men”. This did not end the argument and Maynard showed much forbearance over the following months - Omar was too thin, too tall, the stars in the astrologer engraving were in the wrong place a more...”I do not think that a beard like that of a goat is at all correct for an old Persian”...
Eventually the book made it through the arguments and was published in December 1928, inevitably with a printing error.
As a result it is only these special copies which have an initial F at the opening of quatrain 41 - they were omitted in the other copies by accident probably due to Maynard’s exhaustion with the whole process.