With Friends Possessed

'[Edward] FitzGerald (1809-1883) won a small piece of immortality with his translation-adaptation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam ... but in every other way he seems to have successfully avoided fulfilment. A godless Epicurean, he lived in permanent virginity, never pressing his homosexual desires beyond a number of sentimental crushes... The son of a fabulously rich heiress, he rarely travelled... Though he had many friends he also had a perverse penchant for alienating them... [Robert Bernard]