Tag Archives: Walter Phelps Dodge

creating pose and gesture out of repressed ferocity

The author of fifty plus books, including the translations in “literal” detail of all the graphic possibilities that could be mustered and blustered against the edifice of late Victorian England in a raging torrent of works that could be regarded … Continue reading

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turn out your love light

…Upon finishing The Arabian Nights, Richard Francis Burton began to work on a new edition of The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui, an Arabic manual on the art of love, a sort of complementary tome to the “literal” eroticism … Continue reading

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arabian nights: plain and literal translations…

In 1865 Richard Burton was transferred to Santos in Brazil , where Isabel for the first time was able to make a home. They spent four years in Brazil, two in Damascus- which ended in trouble because of the intrigues … Continue reading

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eccentric tastes and ever watchful wife

The unthinkable. The unknowable. The hidden. The explorations of Sir  Richard Burton…. Burton married Isabel Arundel in 1861, in an almost secret ceremony in the Bavarian Catholic Church. “We will have no show,” Burton insisted, “for a grand marriage ceremony … Continue reading

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richard burton : cities of the saints

Breaking Victorian taboos, one expedition at a time… …In a later book, Explorations of the Highlands of the Brazil, Richard Burton described a village with 20 per cent more males than females and noted jovially” Is it not a waste … Continue reading

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an englishman in salt lake city

…So swiftly did he write, that before one book had left the binders, another was on its way to the printers. Systole, diastole, never ceasing—never even pausing. Miss Arundell being inflexible, Burton resolved to let the matter remain nine months … Continue reading

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burton and the polygamy riddle

…The Mormons at this time were considered a great curiosity in England. Since the murder of Joseph Smith in Illinois in 1844, and the subsequent dramatic exodus to the desert isolation of the great inland sea, the sect had flourished … Continue reading

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manifestly not the third

Sir Richard Francis Burton. Explorations, eccentric tastes, and an ever-watchful wife… Burton had often said “he required two, and only two qualities in a woman, namely beauty and affection.” He had also written that he admired them “soft-bending and relaxed.” … Continue reading

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odd couple: moons and mountains and source of the matter

Captain Sir Richard Burton and the “Speke-easy” … Burton went to Africa in late 1858 with the thirty year old John Speke, who had been wounded with him in Somaliland. This was to prove a disastrous choice. Speke was a … Continue reading

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eccentric tastes and watchful wife…

The hidden. The unknowable. The unthinkable. Sir Richard Francis Burton. The first great anti-hero…. As a lieutenant in the British army in India, he had nothing but contempt for his fellow officers who remained aloof and indifferent to the exotic … Continue reading

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