Almost despite himself Edward FitzGerald, country gentleman and amateur man of letters, has secured a permanent place in the history of English poetry as--for want of a better word--the translator of stanzas known as rubáiyátby the twelfth-century Persian Omar Khayyám; and as a master of the art of letter writing, several of whose correspondents were major literary figures in their own right.

Born 31 March 1809 at Bredfield House near Woodbridge in Suffolk, Edward Purcell was the sixth of eight children (three sons, five daughters) in the well-to-do family of John Purcell and Mary Frances FitzGerald Purcell. Though the poet's father did not practice the law in which he was educated, he took on several other careers simultaneously or in turn: country squire, militiaman, high sheriff, member of Parliament, and mining speculator. Both parents had aristocratic Irish antecedents, through which they were related...