Eben Francis Thompson (1859 - 1939)

Eben Francis Thompson (January 29, 1859 - December 2, 1939) was a literary figure from Worcester, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard Law School, and was admitted to the bar in 1884. Although Mr. Thompson was for over half a century a lawyer, it was for his literary pursuits that he was most widely recognized. He produced his own translation of the works of Omar Khayyam. In 1900 he founded the Omar Khayyam Club of America, of which he was secretary for twenty years, and later, president. In his later life, Mr. Thompson compiled for his own use what he called a "reading translation" of Shakespeare, in which he marked on all of the hundred thousand lines of Shakespeare's plays with accents to show the correct pronunciation of Elizabethan words.