Edward FitzGerald (March 31, 1809 – June 14, 1883) was an English nobleman and one of the wealthiest men in England.  Born Edward Purcell, his father assumed the name and coat of arms of his wife’s family after her father died and left a substantial fortune. He was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge and was friends with Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Makepeace Thackeray, among others. His was a pleasant and idle life preoccupied with flowers, music and literature.  He began a study of Persian literature at Oxford in 1853 with Professor Edward Byles Cowell. Cowell discovered the quatrains of Omar Khayyam in the Asiatic Society library in 1857 and sent them to FitzGerald, who was captivated and set out to translate them, publishing the first edition on January 1859. The attracted little attention at first but was discovered by Rossetti and Swinburne, which gradually brought recognition and demand for subsequent editions.