Edward RehatsekEdward Rehatsek (1814–1891) was born in Hungary and educated there as an engineer, but spent most of his adult life in India, where he travelled as an engineer but eventually reinvented himself as an Orientalist. Over the past century and a half, hehas been one of the most widely read Victorian-era translators of Persian literature into English. In the same year that Rehatsek completed The Picture Gallery (1888), he shipped his manuscript from his home in Bombay to Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot in England to include in his and Richard Francis Burton’s Kama Shastra Society series. By that time, Rehatsek had already produced two translations of Persian works in the same genre for the series, both of which were published: Jāmī’s Bahāristān as Abode of Spring (1886) and Saʿdī’s Gulistān as Rose-Garden (1887). The Picture Gallery thus represents the mature work of an important translator who had spent several years immersed in this important genre of Persian wisdom literature. Read More Read Less