Omar Khayyam Club Menu, 24th March 1938, Signed Original Etching by Martin Hardie

Limited to approx. 60 copies for attendees at Pagani’s; signed by the artist

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Publisher

Printing Details

Limited edition (the number printed was determined by the number of guests, thought to be around 60* as per Cambridge University). String binding. 24 × 18cm.

*The Club's membership was capped at 59, in honour of the 1859 FitzGerald translation.

The front cover is a pencil signed etching (with distinct plate mark) by Martin Hardie. It suggests Quatrain XII of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat: “A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou / Beside me singing in the Wilderness” and echoes the Safavid-era Persian miniature painting.

The booklet opens to a title page, the menu with the toast to "old Khayyam", the guest list (which includes A J Cronin, Martin Hardie, John Henderson, W W Jacobs, James Laver, D B Wyndham Lewis, David Low, R H Mottram, A P Oppe, and Will Owen, with E Denison Ross as President). The final page of text is a poem in honour of OMar Khayyam and the club by playwright and lyricist, Arthur Wimperis.

The Omar Khayyam Club was an influential London dining and literary society founded in 1892, established to celebrate the 11th-century Persian poet and mathematician Omar Khayyam and the translator, Edward FitzGerald. The inaugural meeting was also held at Pagani's on October 13th, 1892.

This meeting was also the last of the Club's secretary, John Henderson, who died later that year, and who had acted as the Club's chronicler and historian.

Condition

This copy is in very good condition for age, with just some very minor tanning to the covers.

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