Anniversary Year

The anniversaries of literary figures are enjoyable and useful occasions. They bring renewed emphasis on a writer's work, inviting celebration, serious discussion, fresh insights and new publications. They also provide an opportunity to assess or reconfirm a writer's reputation and value. In 2009 there was a three-fold anniversary opportunity for one of our poets, Edward FitzGerald, who, until quite recently, was so popular that almost everyone could quote from his work with a mixture of admiration, amusement and affection. The year 2009 marked the bicentenary of his birth on 31 March 1809, the sesquicentenary of his most important work, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám (1859) and the centenary of Sir Granville Bantock's vast and splendid oratorio, Omar Khayyam (completed in 1909).