Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton: A Biography (Paperback)

by Edward Rice (Author) "Richard Burton's father, Joseph Netterville Burton, was a gentleman in an age when being a gentleman was a proper calling..." (more)
Key Phrases: amateur barbarian, parrot books, consular duties, Arabian Nights, Central Africa, West Africa (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"[A] compulsively readable biography." -- The Week 02/20/04

Product Description
"This masterpiece of history and biography turns the real-life adventures of Burton into a riveting tale...The last great word on the last great explorer of the colonial age." -Wall Street Journal.

A New York Times best seller when it was first published, Rice's biography is the gripping story of a fierce, magnetic, and brilliant man whose real-life accomplishments are the stuff of legend. Rice retraces Burton's steps as the first European adventurer to search for the source of the Nile; to enter, disguised, the forbidden cities of Mecca and Medina; and to travel through remote stretches of India, the Near East, and Africa. From his spying exploits to his startling literary accomplishments (the discovery and translation of the Kama Sutra and his seventeen-volume translation of Arabian Nights), Burton was an engrossing, larger-than-life Victorian figure, and Rice's splendid biography lays open a portrayal as dramatic, complicated, and compelling as the man himself.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (June 5, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030681028X
• ISBN-13: 978-0306810282
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #162,572 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Great Life in the Great Game, September 3, 2004

By	Theo Logos (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

Soldier, spy, swordsman, linguist, proto-anthropologist, adventurer, explorer, eroticist, prolific writer and poet, and seeker after hidden gnosis - Richard Francis Burton was all of this and more. While no single biography can capture the entirety of this amazing life, Edward Rice's book is an insightful, fascinating treatment of this larger than life man, and deserves to be read by all who wish to know Burton.
While Rice's book covers the whole of Burton's life and career, its concentration and strengths are on his period of greatest adventuring and exploring, from his introduction to India and the East as a soldier and spy for the East India Company, through his exploits in Arabia, and his explorations in Africa. Rice lingers long over Burton's wanderings in India, exploring in depth how Burton immersed himself in Eastern languages, customs, religions, and thought until he could easily pass himself off as a native. Burton's most famous exploits - the pilgrimage to Mecca disguised as an Arab, penetrating the sacred and forbidden city of Harar in East Africa (the first European to do so), and his explorations of Central Africa, searching for the source of the Nile, are all covered in depth, with great detail.
Rice takes the time to concentrate on two of the more shadowy aspects of Burton's life - his participation in the "Great Game"; spying for the British Empire, and his personal search after gnosis, the hidden wisdom of life. Often these pursuits were intertwined, as when his initiations into secret Hindu and Sufi sects served both to further his personal quest for gnosis, and to give him cover and openings for his espionage activities.
Also well covered are Burton's greatest literary achievements His superb annotated translation of the Arabian Nights (for which he was knighted), his translation of The Perfumed Garden, and his original Sufi poem, The Kasidah, are given particular attention, but much of his prolific literary production is also noted.
This book has its weaknesses, but they are slight. It starts out rather slowly, as Rice give outstanding background information on the British Empire in India, which while valuable, momentarily distracts the story away from Burton's amazing life. Also, it seems that Rice so admired his subject that he could not bear to show him in any but the best light. In every major controversy of Burton's career, Rice always favors Burton's side, almost to the point of occasionally glossing over some of Burton's very real flaws.
This book is a valuable addition to the Burton literature, and should be required reading for any Burton enthusiasts, or anyone who is a fan of remarkable lives of adventure.

Theo Logos

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Definitive Biography..., January 24, 2003

By	C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This is by far one of the best biographies I've read in recent times. Not only is the subject matter astonishing, capturing the life of one of the most exciting figures of the 19th century, the author focuses on the man's profuse writings, thankfully leaving out the once fashionable psychoanalytic approach of interpretation when writing biography. This is the third life history I've read on Richard Burton, and it's certainly the finest written and the most thorough.

Those of you, who are not familiar with R.F. Burton, are in for a thrilling reading experience. This man, probably more so than Byron himself, is the archetypal Byronic figure of the age: a linguist, (29 languages and numerous dialects), scholar of eastern literature and religion, particularly the mystical arm of Islam, Sufi; a practicing mystic; explorer of Africa (co-discoverer of the source of the Nile); a secret agent working for her majesty during England's acquisition of India's wealth, known to historians as 'The Great Game'. He was also one of the first white men, who made the Pilgrimage to Mecca, and as Rice argues, Burton was and continued to be a practicing Muslim, therefore his pilgrimage was deeply religious as well as a journey of danger and adventure. Burton was dashing, an expert swordsman and horseman, and a prolific writer, poet and translator who rank as one of the best of his time.

Burton is known to most as one of the scholars who brought 'The Arabian Nights' to the West...he heard a lot of the tales through the Persian oral tradition; memorized them in their original language, and sat around many a camp fire in the desert, re-telling these wonderful stories to anyone who would listen. Burton was a storyteller in the truest sense. But 'The Arabian Nights' only scratches the surface of his many translations from eastern literature - 'The Kama Sutra of Vatsyaya' and 'The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui: A Manual of Arabian Erotology', to name an infamous few...

What impressed me most about Burton was his alarming intellectual curiousity, his exhaustive industry as a recorder of foreign cultures. While other 'gentleman' of his time would rather murder the wildlife to take back to their drawing rooms, to then hang on their walls, Burton preferred to sketch and write about the places and people he came across in his travels to then share with the rest of us. He was an incessant scribbler. The man's thirst for life was daunting and this magnetic soul ensured he did not waste a minute of it...

Edward Rice's ~Captain Sir Richard Frances Burton~ is the definitive biography.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Burton, Richard Burton, August 8, 2001

By	"macpazfink" (Adrogue, Buenos Aires Argentina) - See all my reviews

Sir Richard Francis Burton spoke, proficiently, over twenty languages. A prolific writer and skilled translator, he wrote a very large number of books on the most diverse subjects (history, religion, geography, travel, sexology, ethnography, etc.); introduced the Kama Sutra to the West and translated from Arabic the Book of A Thousand Night and a Night (the Thousand and One Nights). He was also an explorer, soldier, fencing expert and, specially, a secret agent. He visited, a hundred and fifty years ago, some of the farthest corners of India, Africa, and South America, travelling, in most cases, through hostile and uncharted territories. He was one of the few Westerners who entered (and survived) the sacred Islamic city of Mecca, disguised as an Arab, and he was the first one to enter the forbidden city of Harar, in the heart of Africa. With a personal history like this (yes, it is all real, and there is more) it seems to me that even the least competent biographer would write an interesting book. Edward Rice, however, is more than a competent biographer and his book is really good. He describes in detail the adventurous and turbulent life of Burton, providing useful commentaries on the places Burton went to, the nature of the religions he became initiated in and contemporary society in general. Throughout the book it is evident that he researched intensely and that he visited some of the places where Burton lived. He is also objective to his subject, always justifying his statements with information. The book is clearly written and never boring. I am sure it is one of the best biographies of Captain Burton.