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Article: A Rage to Live: A Biography of Richard and Isabel Burton.(Review)
- Article from:
- African Business
- Article date:
- December 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 IC Publications Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Mary S Lovell
There can be few Victorian personalities as complex as Sir Richard Burton, the explorer, linguist, scholar and author, and few lives as colourful. This is one reason that he has become a favourite subject for biographers, but none previously have paid more than passing attention to his marriage to Isabel. On the face of it, they seemed an ill suited couple - he the raffish, vain, bigoted, hard drinking, buccaneering scoundrel, whose single minded determination to make a name for himself won him as many enemies as admirers - she the quiet, shy, self-effacing, very model of Victorian womanhood.
But on the evidence uncovered by author Mary ...