Selected Papers on Anthropology

This present edited book is a collection of the rarer and more inaccessible of Burton’s articles which from time to time he contributed to the Journals of Learned Societies, “Monthlies” or “Weeklies”. The small selection of these papers which are not only rare and interesting, but which also gives an insight into the varied activities and achievements of Burton’s crowded life.
The collection of Burton’s papers is very wide in its scope. It deals not only with the better known sides of his life – travel and anthropology, but also with the multifarious interests which he acquired in whatever part of the world he happened to find himself. Further, the most interesting papers are surely those when he was at the height of his career as an explorer, and before his activities had been restricted by an unsympathetic and unenlightened Government has been also included in this edited book.
It is a detailed record of Burton’s early days in the Sindh survey, with full accounts of his numerous adventures when in disguise he laid the foundation to his great anthropological knowledge. Fresh from Burton’s work in Sindh, fired with the spirit of further adventure, and thirsting to satisfy his insatiable desire for knowledge, Burton made his famous pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina.
With regard to Mecca and Harar, the very rare Guide book to Mecca and an article on Harar from the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society are included. The next three papers (of a total of ten) selected are distinctly anthropological. They are shed interesting light on little-known manners and customs, and in them we see the seed of the power of annotation which propagated in his fertile brain for years was to burst out in full blossom in his famous translation of the Nights. The remaining four articles are as diverse as was Burton himself.
Finally this volume, besides the introduction, a few preliminary and explanatory remarks at the beginning of each paper had been made by the editor itself, beside that an occasional footnotes added, which installed so as to be quite distinct from any which Burton has already inserted.
Some of the Burton’s pamphlets are so rare that the chance of finding them is little less than an impossibility. Such a volume as like this not be superfluous, for, apart from saving people an enormous amount of trouble, it will give them further insight into the life-work of one of the greatest men of the Victorian era.