Sir Richard Burton, the explorer, adventurer, translator, and student of Eastern sexual customs, was born in Torquay, England. He received an irregular education, which included an expulsion from Oxford University. In 1842 Burton joined the East India Company and went to India, where he learned the Persian, Hindustani, Afghan, and Arabic languages. Burton was the first European to reach Harar, the religious capital of Somaliland. He was the discoverer of Lake Tanganyika and explored in the Congo, the Cameroons, Dahomey, and Brazil. He was a pioneer ethnologist and anthropologist. Burton was a linguist of dazzling ability, speaking 29 languages and 11 dialects. He wrote 43 books on his travels and 2 volumes of poetry. In addition to translating the Arabian Nights, he translated) 6 volumes of Portuguese literature, 2 volumes of Latin poetry, and 4 volumes of Neapolitan, African, and Hindu folklore. Following a trip to the United States in 1860, Burton published an account of the Mormon settlement in Utah titled City of the Saints (1861). His wife, Isabel Arundel, frequently traveled with him on such journeys. After Burton died in Trieste in 1890, she burned many of his journals, as well as the manuscript of an uncompleted work called The Scented Garden Men's Hearts to Gladden.
