Edward Byles Cowell

Who was Edward Byles Cowell?

Professor Edward Byles Cowell FBA was a noted translator of Persian poetry and the first professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge University.

Cowell was born in Ipswich, and became interested in Oriental languages at the age of fifteen, when he found a copy of Sir William Jones's works in the public library. Self-taught, he began translating and publishing Hafez within the year.

On the death of his father in 1842 he took over the family business. He married in 1845, and in 1850 entered Magdalen College, Oxford, where he studied and catalogued Persian manuscripts for the Bodleian Library. From 1856-1867 he lived in Calcutta as professor of English history at Presidency College. He was also as principal of Sanskrit College from 1858 to 1864. In this year he discovered a manuscript of Omar Khayyám's quatrains in the Asiatic Society's library and sent a copy to London for his friend and student, Edward Fitzgerald, who then produced the famous English translations. He also published, unsigned, an introduction to Khayyám with translations of thirty quatrains in the Calcutta Review.