Richard Le Gallienne (1866–1947) was not a fashionable writer in his day, and though his version of the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám is often prominently quoted today, he rarely gets much credit for it; it is Omar Khayyám who is being quoted. When Le Gallienne the ‘translator’ does attract attention, it is rarely favourable. It scarcely needs to be said that Le Gallienne, like all other interpreters of the Rubáiyát, has been overshadowed by Edward FitzGerald's fame and esteem, but it might be said that Le Gallienne has been unfairly, if understandably, overshadowed by Omar Khayyám. It is not clear whether Le Gallienne himself understood the danger these two luminaries – FitzGerald and Khayyám – posed to his own prospects for fame, but the subtitle of his Rubáiyát is ‘a paraphrase of several literal translations by Richard Le Gallienne’, which suggests that the poet was keen to claim his share of the credit.

Yet the relationship between Le Gallienne and the very idea of a Rubáiyát translation is vexed. The paraphraser can hardly be accused of any deceit as he himself admitted that his Rubáiyát was not a translation at all, but rather a ‘paraphrase’.