Richard Francis Burton

Richard Francis Burton (b. 1821–d. 1890) was a prodigiously gifted polymath who knew some twenty-five languages, wrote more than twenty books about his journeys through distant lands, introduced the Kama Sutra and other exotic works of erotica to English readers, and produced a controversial and influential sixteen-volume translation of the Arabian Nights. Few Victorians ventured to as many regions of the world as Burton or showed as much curiosity as he did about the cultures and customs of the peoples who inhabited them. He was raised by his expatriate parents in Italy and France, began his career as a cadet in the East India Company army, gained fame from his pilgrimage to Mecca disguised as a Muslim from South Asia, led the first British-sponsored expedition in search of the source of the Nile River, traveled extensively through East and West Africa, North and South America, Arabia and even Iceland, and spent the final decades of his life as a British consul in Damascus and Trieste. He was a prominent figure in bohemian circles in mid-century London, where he helped found the controversial Anthropological Society and the notorious Cannibal Club; he provoked public outrage for his defense of Islam, polygamy, and slavery; he famously and tragically clashed with John Hanning Speke, his erstwhile companion on the East African expedition, over the latter’s claims to have discovered the Nile’s source; he spent the last decade of his life battling the forces of prudery in Britain with his translations of The Kama Sutra, The Book of a Thousand Nights and Night (especially its “Terminal Essay” on pederasty), and other sexually explicit works. He was both an agent and a critic of British imperialism, a racist and a relativist, a religious skeptic and a spiritualist, a pornographer and a cultural provocateur, a man of action and a prolific author. No wonder he has attracted the attention of biographers and literary scholars, historians and cultural critics, geographers and anthropologists, area studies specialists, novelists and many others. They have been drawn to his protean character, his literary accomplishments, his contrarian opinions, his daring expeditions, his geographical findings, his ethnographic observations, his interest in human sexuality, and much more. Every generation, it seems, has found new reasons to revisit his life and writings.